Sancerre blanc Cuvée Caillottes 2010
After a cold, restorative winter and an average summer, the 2010 harvest began a week later than normal. Sauvignon Blancs from this vintage are delightful – aromatic and fruity, offering lovely typicité and great freshness, perhaps resembling 2002 and 2008 in style.
Your exclusive Cuvée Caillottes comes from the middle section of the region where clay and chalky limestone dominate. The surface of the vineyards is carpeted with small white stones – hence the name caillottes – giving the wines a distinct minerality as well as a wonderful concentration of fruit.
Your 2010 vintage is apple green in colour with an herbaceous, just picked pea-pod and gooseberry scent. The palate is rapier-like and classically steely with a delicious grapefruit and crunchy apple tang, a touch of blackcurrant leaf and a resoundingly zippy finish. After a year in bottle it will take on weight offering a lovely stone fruit and mineral quality.
It will make a wonderful aperitif. However, it is also an incredibly versatile food wine, accompanying delicate fish dishes, shellfish, summer salads, oriental dishes and, of course local cheeses such as the crottin de Chavignol (a goat’s cheese).