This is the domaine’s only wine that is not terroir- or soil-specific. It is mainly produced from two vineyards positioned away from the Saint-Andélain slope. Specifically, the grapes come from one parcel of 20+-year-old vines on flinty-clay soils and another in the lieu-dit of Les Coques on limestone/marl, blended with young-vine fruit from Le Bois de Saint-Andélain. This is always the domaine’s most direct and accessible expression of Pouilly-Fumé. It is also a wine that has improved drastically under Benjamin Dagueneau, now rivalling the other wines for quality and class. It fermented in a mix of new (20%) and 3- to 4-year-old barrels and matured in wood and tank.
2016 was a tiny, low-yielding year for the domaine and also one of the greats for wine quality. On release, the 2016 wines delivered the kind of lithe, energetic, crystal-fruited personalities that made this domaine so revered all those decades ago. Given the coiled power of the wines, what was remarkable was the precision and detail etched through the fruit. To put it another way, the 2016s are utterly classic Dagueneau and still have years of development ahead (like all great bottles, Dagueneau’s always benefit from extended aging in the cellar—five to ten years usually to reach their peak and easily holding for 15 to 20 years or more).