Producer:
Grape Variety:
100% Sauvignon Blanc
Tasting Note:
Monts-Damnés (pronounced mon-dannay) is perhaps the best-known vineyard in Chavignol. Drinking some great juice from this site leaves you in little doubt that Chavignol is home to, as a general rule, the most textural, mineral, uplifting and sublime Sancerre. Boulay's bottling comes from 45-year-old vines in one of the steepest inclines of this majestic vineyard, a 40° south-facing plot on terres blanches soil (white, chalky clay and limestone), directly adjacent to Edmond Vatan's Clos la Néore vineyard. It's a parcel of vines that gift a wine of great hedonism and complexity. This was vinified in three- to four-year-old Rousseau Tronçais oak casks, before finishing its ageing in large cask prior to bottling. Tasted from barrel, Boulay's scintillating 2018 was so, so pure, fresh and firmly structured, yet with certainly more flesh than in 2017. These wines tend to be consumed before the terroir has fully revealed itself, which is why Boulay runs a museum program from this vineyard (the current release is 2003). In 2018 the wine will clearly be more open and seductive from the get-go. Expect scents of complex botanicals and crushed stone, a silky, deep palate with great precision, shot through with bracing tension and mouth-watering freshness. Perfumed, deep and long, it is the definition of great Chavignol
Vinification:
Gerard Boulay is one of the greats of this tiny village and produces some of the most distinctive and sublime wines in Sancerre. He produces 60,000 bottles of fine wine from 11 hectares with Organic Viticulture.
Scores:
93 Points Vinous