Domaine Gérard Boulay Sancerre Les Monts-Damnés 2021

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 Vatan’s Clos la Néore vineyard. It’s a parcel of vines that gifts a wine of great hedonism and complexity. Boulay vinifies this cuvée in three- to four-year-old Rousseau Tronçais oak casks before finishing its aging in large cask before bottling.

While the steeply sloped, south-facing Mont-Damnés is one of Chavignol’s warmest sites, this superb wine walks a perfect tightrope between ripeness and texture and that invigorating sense of tension that makes Boulay’s Sancerre’s so compelling. 2021 gives a terrific Mont-Damnés.