From: Sancerre, Loire Valley, France
Varietal: Sauvignon Blanc
Taste: This is a classic textbook Sancerre. It has excellent freshness and aromatics, delicate floral and citrus notes, and a slight weight to its palate, making it a very culinary style of Sancerre. It’s strikingly pretty, with fruit, citrus, wild herbs, and minerals that lean into elegant layers of complexity and structure.
“The 2023 Sancerre is filled with elderflower, lime, and green aromas. It is a medium-bodied style that's tender and supple from three types of chalky soil in the appellation. The clay-chalk portion of the soil brings volume and body, while the chalkiest soils provide some gentle tension. A spritz hint brings much-needed tension in this gentle acidity year. This is a step up from most 2023s in this high-yielding year.”
Rebecca Gibb, July 2024
Pairing: This is an ideal match with lobster tournedos, goat cheese, summer salads, and lean fish. Some specific pairing ideas include serving this with fresh seafood like oysters, mussels, shrimp, and grilled fish. Fresh goat’s milk cheese is always a fantastic fit with wines like this, as are dishes that feature fresh produce, citrus, salads, and light poultry like roasted chicken or chicken salad. In terms of cuisine, Sancerre’s like this one are fantastic with Thai or Japanese cuisine.
This wine. The grapes for this basic cuvée of Sancerre are sourced from the vineyards in Bué, Vinon and Crézancy. After harvest, fermentation is done in stainless steel cuves at temperatures between 14 and 18 degrees Celsius. As with all the whites at the domaine, this wine sits in contact with the fine lees for a considerable period of time with the racking being done late in the spring following harvest. The first bottling occurs no earlier than July and frequently does not occur until September of the year following harvest.
About the winery via Flatiron Wines. Domaine Lucien Crochet may be the top grower in the Sancerre village of Bué. That may not sound like much. How many of us obsess over the villages of Sancerre? How many can we even name? Chavignol, maybe, given its kimmeridgian limestone, superstar growers (the Cotats, Boulay and Vatan), and famously steep vineyards with memorable names (like 'Les Monts Damnés' or 'The Damned Mountains').
But Bué? Hardly a household name, despite its incredible terroir.
Gently rolling hills of Griottes (Oxfordian limestone clay) and Caillotes (limestone gravels) make wines that have all the depth of minerality and vibrant acidity of a great Chavignol, but that also manage to drink younger.
How good are the wines of Domaine Lucien Crochet? When Eric Asimov did a Wines of the Times column on Sancerre a dozen years ago, Crochet's was his top pick. It even beat out the superstar Cotats. We think Crochet has only gone from strength to strength since then. And Chris Kissack, one of the best writers on the Loire Valley, says the Domaine is so good it's mere "presence... in the village... is clear testimony to the quality and potential of Bué’s vineyards and wines." Crochet is the benchmark.
