This stunning new bottling becomes Valentin Desloges’ first Sauvignon Blanc. It comes from vines in the clay and flint soils rising above the Loire River at Noyers-sur-Cher. Picked ripe, with barely any vestige of ‘Sauvignon-ness’, the grapes were pressed as whole bunches and fermented with indigenous yeasts in both tank and a selection of used barrels ranging from 228 to 500 litres. 

Despite the negligible use of sulphur (1 g/L at the press and 2 g/L at bottling), it’s an incredibly focused, pulpy, penetrating Sauvignon. Aromas of crushed rock, chamomile leaves, sea salt and chervil lead to a zesty and mouth-filling wine finishing on song with excellent grip and mouth-watering stony acidity. As always here, Sauvignon Blanc, just like Chardonnay in Burgundy, is the messenger rather than the message. Sorry to namedrop, but fans of Didier Dagueneau should beat a path to this wine. 

If single-site wines are rare as hen’s teeth in Touraine, this incisive Sauvignon Blanc makes a compelling case. A step up from the Ancorage label, it is drawn from vines aged between 20 and 50 years in the west-facing terroir of Les Puits aux Chiens. Situated on the right bank of the Cher River, it’s the highest point of the commune of Noyers, a cool terroir with shallow flint sands and white clay over Turonian limestone rock. 

In the cellar, the grapes were pressed as whole bunches and fermented with indigenous yeasts in a selection of used barrels ranging from 228 to 500 litres. These vessels include those made using oak staves from the nearby Loches forest, selected and aged by Valentin Desloges himself (and coopered by François Frères). The wine aged for 12 months with a single racking and plenty of lees contact. It was bottled by gravity without filtration. 

Twenty-twenty three was a beautiful year for Valentin Desloges, and many Sancerre or Pouilly Fume producers would be delighted to have this as their top cuvée. Free from obvious varietal flavours, it’s an incredibly focused, limpid, penetrating Sauvignon and, like all this grower’s whites, built around texture and detail rather than typicity. It’s so beautifully made, combining potent saline minerality with a silky depth that points to Valentin’s exceptional terroir.  

Valentin Desloges’ flagship white comes from the Bel Air terroir, a south-facing site on the left bank of the Cher River and home to the Domaine’s oldest Sauvignon Blanc vines (some reaching 60 years). It’s not simply the older, lower-yielding vines that contribute to this cuvée’s ravishing intensity. The soils are dominated by red clay, just below a layer of flinty sands, which add to the wine’s spicy generosity and textural breadth. The winemaking is not so different from the Chapitre I. However, this wine fermented in barrel and matured (for 18 months instead of 12) in ex-Coche-Dury barrels with 20% new oak from the Domaine’s tailor-made barrels.

A beautifully silky Pinot Noir from Touraine young gun Valentin Desloges. Valentin worked with soul brothers Raphaël Coche (Coche-Dury) and Thierry Pillot (Domaine Paul Pillot) before returning home to take control of his father’s vines, so we were rather excited to see what he could do with his Pinot Noir in the Loire Valley’s northern climate. Spoiler alert: we are not disappointed! 

The Pinot is drawn from 25-year-old vines in the Quatre Piliers lieu-dit in Noyers-sur-Cher in the right bank of the Loire River. In the cellar, the grapes were macerated for 11 days, then fermented and aged in 228-litre barrels made using oak staves from the nearby Loches forest. 

Expect lovely, tender depth of sweet fruit with the flow of redcurrant and spiced cherry leading to something more earth-mineral. Silken and textural, the wine’s clear and refreshing acidity provides mouth-watering balance while the tapering, featherlight tannins outclass many a red Burgundy. 

Pineau d’Aunis is making a comeback in the Loire Valley. This enigmatic variety almost vanished in the early 1970s before starting a slow but steady renaissance. Today, nearly 500 hectares of Pineau d’Aunis are planted (so we’re told), chiefly in the lesser-known Loire regions such as the Touraine appellation and Coteaux du Loir. Loved by the natural people—not to mention a favourite of the thirsty fruit fly Drosophila Suzukii—we’ve not had too much experience with Pineau d’Aunis outside of some lovely, fragrant reds from Eric Nicolas’ Domaine de Bellivière. Regardless, the finest wines for this variety seem to combine beautiful perfumes of wild strawberry, red flower and market-fresh berries with engaging peppery spice and rippling silky fruit—at least, that’s what you get at Les Quatre Piliers. 

Low yields and old vines are key to the purity and quality on offer here, as is the sensitive winemaking ethos that includes just a little hand plunging and only a pinch of sulphur at bottling. Aged in Valentin’s bespoke oak barrels, the juice ages on lees for 12 months before being bottled, again, without filtration. This gorgeous, etheral red shows just how brilliant France’s lesser-known varieties can be.

Home to the Domaine’s oldest Cabernet Franc, the 70-year-old vines in Au dessus de Vitré root down through a blanket of red clay and limestone before tapping into the Turonian limestone bedrock below. It’s a terroir that infuses a deeper register of floral and mineral flavour than the Première Cuvée listed above. There’s a change in winemaking, too. Maceration lasted considerably longer at 22 days, with the juice slowly infusing flavour and gentle tannin from the grape’s skins. Then, the pressing was soft and slow (for the pressing geeks, Valentin uses just one bar of pressure), and the free-run juice aged separately from the press wine. 

Aging occurred in two- to three-year-old 228-litre barrels from Château Mangot for 18 months, and the wine (which may include some press wine depending on the year) was bottled without fining or filtration. The name Grand Cuvée says it all. It’s a super-pure and refined Loire red with lovely, cool, pulpy fruit, suave texture and a surprising salty twist on the finish. A Charles Lachaux or Théo Dancer kind of Cabernet Franc. To appreciate its full range of flavour and texture, Valentin recommends decanting this wine for an hour before serving.    

There is a real finesse to Valentin’s red wines, as you might expect, given that he has worked with Thierry Pillot and Rafael Coche in Burgundy. The first of two Cabernet Franc wines, this larger cuvée stems from a parcel of 45- to 50-year-old (on average) mass-selection vines in the red clay and silex soils of Saint-Aignan. Desloges crops at half the permitted yield for this region, and this wine fermented (with 5% bunches) in stainless steel without sulphur for two weeks. He then transferred it to used barrels from Cheval Blanc to complete its year-long aging.

In terms of style, Desloges’ lithe and pulpy Cabernet Francs resemble the elegant shape and slender tannins of Thierry Germain’s Saumur-Champigny more than, say, the Chinon or Bourgueil archetype. The wines are silky and vividly fresh, with the sensation of biting into a firm, juicy redcurrant (what the French would call croquant).