Gerard Boulay Sancerre Les Monts-Damnes 2020

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 some of the most textural, mineral, uplifting and sublime Sancerre’s. Boulay’s bottling comes from 45-year-old vines on 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 gifts a wine of great hedonism and complexity. This was vinified in three- to four-year-old Rousseau Tronçais oak casks, before finishing its aging in large cask prior to bottling.

 

While the steeply sloped, south-facing Mont Damnés is one of Chavignol’s warmest sites, this superb and seductive wine walks the perfect tightrope between being riper and more textured on the palate than the previous wines, but still maintaining that invigorating tension that makes these Sancerre’s so compelling.

 

Athletically built and powered by mineral tension, you can expect all kinds of citrus, white florals, wet stones and a fresh herbal edge, perfectly aligned to the electrifying acidity and mouth-watering pulpy texture. Quivering energy drives the wine to a potent yet refined finish. Another captivating release from the great mineral reactor of Sancerre and this revered grower. Prodigious.