Sancerre? For Spring? Groundbreaking!
and somms - don't roll your eyes.
Ah, Sancerre, the wine that sommeliers love to hate.
And every year around the end of March when Spring kicks off little green buds of herby greens, you’ll see this wine popping off as pairings everywhere on menus and on shelves. And tomorrow, well, rejoice! Spring is here. And that means, Sancerre!
Over a decade ago, I too was a snobby sommelier that preferred the non-aromatic whites to this ubiquitous sauvignon blanc that is so fun to say. But something changed. More on that below. But first, if you are going to drink Sancerre, make it special. Here is a favorite for friends of my newsletter:
Only a few hundred bottles remain. Forever.
Dominique, the vigneron at Domaine du Carrou, is retiring with no heirs. When these bottles are gone, the estate is gone with him. It happens in restaurants too- places you think will always be there, suddenly not. (I am still crying over Barbetta!) It never stops being a gut punch. For wineries, I watched Domaine Gioielli in Corsica disappear and scrambled to find buyers. No luck. I’m watching Domaine Trotereau now with the same dread.
Isn’t that crazy? That a winery can just disappear. That these things can die. They end. I feel like most people don’t think of wine that way, they think of wine as brands or products that will go on forever -
And here we are, holding what’s left of Domaine du Carrou, about as classic and lovely as Sancerre gets.
For the sommeliers who claim they hate Sancerre, I always wonder: have you ever had it where it comes from, with the cheese it was meant to be eaten with? Goat cheese in Chavignol, with a glass of Sancerre, and suddenly the whole thing clicks. Respectfully, until then, I’m not sure your opinion counts!
I believe every wine has its moment. If you don’t like a style, you probably just haven’t met it in the right setting. (Ask me about the time I finally understood orange wine- in a brothel on the Slovenian border.)
“Grows together, goes together” is a cliché until it isn’t. In 2016, I had Chavignol cheese with Sancerre and it rewired something for me. If you want to do yourself one better this Spring, make the Chez Panisse Baked Goat Cheese Salad and open a bottle of Domaine Carrou. It’s the kind of pairing that the French call a petite mort.
Get the cheese here. Get the wine here. Get a case, actually — Spring is 12 weeks long and this winery is going extinct (😭).
It was during a 2017 dinner at Régis Minet’s house in Pouilly-Fumé (that other Savvy Blanc spot in the Loire) where I first had that goat cheese and Sancerre pairing.
Régis had invited a group of growers, many of them Kermit Lynch producers, people whose names I knew from my buying orders for the restaurants but had never seen all together. We gathered over a big pot of potimarron soup in the dead of winter. Hippolyte-Reverdy was there, Trotereau, and Domaine de Reuilly.
Sancerre is a region that used to be planted largely to Chasselas (the white grape of Swiss fame), before Sauvignon Blanc took over because it was easier, more reliable, and eventually, more popular. Then Paris got involved. Café culture, fashion people, proximity to the city. Sancerre became the thing you drank, and then the thing everyone drank.
And honestly, I get it. It’s a wine that gives you something right away. Even if you don’t know much about wine, you know what you’re tasting. There’s no barrier to entry. It doesn’t make you feel stupid. Which is always a lovely thing with wine.
I would take that: a well-farmed, well-made, unapologetically expressive Sancerre- over a lot of wines that hide behind the idea of being “natural” but forget that they still have to be good. There’s nothing noble about a wine that smells like a problem.
Sancerre isn’t basic. It’s a wine of generosity. It’s the people’s wine.
And I’m very much on its side.
Behind the paywall, subscribers get access to a wild rarity - the Sancerre that any sommelier worth their salt would actually go mad for.
Only a few magnums remain…
