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Monts-Damnés (pronounced mon-dannay) is perhaps the best-known vineyard in Chavignol. Drinking great juice from this site leaves you in little doubt that Chavignol is home to some of the most textural, mineral, uplifting and sublime Sancerre. Boulay’s bottling comes from 45-year-old vines on one of the steepest inclines of this majestic vineyard, a 40-degree south-facing plot on terres blanches (white, chalky clay and limestone) directly adjacent to Vatan’s Clos la Néorev vineyard. This parcel of vines gives a wine of great hedonism and complexity. Boulay vinifies this cuvée in three- to four-year-old Rousseau Tronçais oak casks before finishing its aging in large cask before bottling.
While the steeply sloped, south-facing Mont-Damnés is one of Chavignol’s warmest sites, this superb wine walks a perfect tightrope between ripeness and texture and that invigorating sense of tension that makes Boulay’s Sancerre so compelling. A distillate of its site, the new release is deep yet compact and rocky, awash with racy stone fruit, orange blossom and crushed oyster shell tempered by a mouthwatering mineral spine and a nibble of quinine and chalky phenolics. The marriage of density and energy is seemingly perfect. Again, give it time to blossom, or enjoy this stellar release young with ceviche, tuna tartare or sashimi—that kind of thing.