About this WINE
Andre Dezat
One of the most respected of Loire estates, as well as a long-standing Berry Bros. & Rudd supplier, the Dezat family's 38 hectares covers 6 villages in Sancerre and 4 in Pouilly-Fumé incorporating the key soil types of 'terres blanches' (ancient active limestone), 'caillottes' (stony clay) and 'silex' (flint).
Simon and Louis Dezat represent the fourth generation, taking the domaine to new heights by making incremental changes to improve the wine more time is spent among the vines, fine-tuning the vine, while a sorting table has been recently adopted to select only the healthiest fruit.
Their ripe understated Sancerre delivers year-in, year-out, while the Domaine Thibault Pouilly-Fume is a model of precision and elegance.
Menetou-Salon
Menetou-Salon, located a 30-minute drive west of Sancerre, is an easy drinking source of Sauvignon Blanc made in a fleshy style owing to the Loire region’s unremarkable and fairly flat topography.
The best examples are found on the limestone-based slopes of Morogues.
Sauvignon Blanc
An important white grape in Bordeaux and the Loire Valley that has now found fame in New Zealand and now Chile. It thrives on the gravelly soils of Bordeaux and is blended with Sémillon to produce fresh, dry, crisp Bordeaux Blancs, as well as more prestigious Cru Classé White Graves.
It is also blended with Sémillon, though in lower proportions, to produce the great sweet wines of Sauternes. It performs well in the Loire Valley and particularly on the well-drained chalky soils found in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, where it produces bone dry, highly aromatic, racy wines, with grassy and sometimes smoky, gunflint-like nuances.
In New Zealand, Cloudy Bay in the 1980s began producing stunning Sauvignon Blanc wines with extraordinarily intense nettly, gooseberry, and asparagus fruit, that set Marlborough firmly on the world wine map. Today many producers are rivalling Cloudy Bay in terms of quality and Sauvignon Blanc is now New Zealand`s trademark grape.
It is now grown very successfully in Chile producing wines that are almost halfway between the Loire and New Zealand in terms of fruit character. After several false starts, many South African producers are now producing very good quality, rounded fruit-driven Sauvignon Blancs.
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Description
The Dezat brothers continue to play a very straight bat here. They clearly don't set out to make another Sancerre, respecting the differences in terroir that makes Menetou what it is; a region some 30 miles to the west of Sancerre, comprising a flat terrain of Portlandian limestone stones. Cool-faced, the nose ticks over with a wet stone, creamy leesiness, while the palate decidedly straight-laced with pretty nettle, tight white fruit purity. Refreshingly understated as ever. Drinking 2013 - 2022.
David Berry Green, Loire Wine Buyer
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