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This rare bottling comes from just 0.4 hectares of 70-year-old vines in the Comtesse lieu-dit at the chalky epicentre of Les Monts-Damnés. Locals have considered this vineyard the finest single terroir of Chavignol for hundreds of years. According to Thibaut Boulay, the first mention of the ‘Montdampni’ appeared in documents held by the Abbaye de Saint-Satur in 1252. In his Le Vignoble de Chavignol, Thibaut then reminds us that at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878, the Comtesse lieu-dit was already considered a true star of the Sancerrois, its wines served on the most renowned tables of northern France. As another marker of historical reverence, the Comtesse parcel was only grafted after 1945; before that, it remained the last ungrafted white vineyard in France, as La Romanée-Conti was for red grapes.
The soil composition is pure Kimmeridgian limestone and consists of a miserly 30- to 40-centimetre layer of topsoil over solid limestone bedrock. This brings intense minerality and warmth as the rocky soil absorbs the sun’s heat and re-radiates it at night. Yet it is also a cooler, less exposed place, so it always produces fully ripe fruit and intense freshness while also finer and more restrained than a typical Monts-Damnés—hence, the historical fame.
In a word, scintillating. Harking back to the thrilling, transparent vintages of 2014 and 2017, it has diamond-cut clarity allied to perfectly ripe fruit intensity and ‘naked limestone’ mineral quality that is the hallmark of this bottling. Marked by the soil rather than the sun, this wine seemingly incorporates the greatest elements of all Boulay’s vineyards: the silk of Monts Damnés, the zest of Clos Beaujeu and saline side of La Côte—there’s also something more elemental. A grand cru in all but name, 20 years will not weary this thrill-a-minute young Sancerre.