Domaine Gaillard Saint-Véran La Côte 2024

This Saint-Véran La Côte comes from a one-hectare plot in the southern part of the Saint-Véran appellation, in the village of Chasselas, in the Mâconnais. Planted on a 10 to 15% slope facing south-east, the vine takes root in shallow hard limestone, which gives the wine its tension. The vines, 30 years old on average, are farmed by Domaine Gaillard with mechanical weeding.

The harvest is done by hand. The grapes are gently pressed in a pneumatic press, then the juice is settled statically for 12 to 48 hours. Alcoholic fermentation, carried out at 18 °C with native yeasts, is followed by malolactic fermentation. Ageing takes place entirely in tank, to preserve the purity of the limestone terroir.

This wine reveals notes of pear, lemon, green apple, acacia honey, white flowers, gingerbread, toasted bread and flint. The nose, fine and discreet, shows a light toasty character. The attack is lively and clean, carried by a tangy backbone that gives direction and length, through to a mineral, mouth-watering finish.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.