Chidaine - Artisanal Montlouis and Vouvray

** Producteur de trés grande qualité Le Classement 2011 (The highest rated producer in Montlouis)

"You have to look to the historical collections of regional leaders Foreau and Huet to find comparable consistently high quality, making it clear that Chidaine is one of the world's finest craftsmen in the medium of white wine, not to mention a continuing source of amazing value.” David Schildknecht

“This dedicated winemaker goes from strength to strength” Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wines of France

Some of us who love great wine, regardless of the grape that it is made from, will know that Chenin Blanc can make some of the world’s greatest white wines. Certainly, when it comes from the best terroirs and the finest growers, Chenin sits comfortably alongside the very finest German Rieslings and white Burgundies. The problem is that, compared to these other wine styles, there are far fewer, genuinely GREAT examples of Chenin on the market, for a range of historical and economic reasons that we do not have time to go into here, and so it is easy to forget the heights that Chenin can reach in the best terroirs. We are fortunate that each year the Domaines Huet & François Chidaine remind us of this reality. We had the opportunity to taste Chidaine’s new releases twice prior to shipping them. On both occasions - once with François in Montlouis and then again at the Renaissance des Appellations on Angers earlier this year, the remarkable intensity, clarity and knife edge balance of the wines stopped us completely in our tracks. In fact we found the wines to be a damn near perfect marriage of vintage and vineyard; lucid, pure and precise and (as always) offering amazing value for their pedigree. Of course, for partisans of Chidaine’s Montloius and Vouvray... learn more