Domaine Chéreau Carré Comte Leloup de Chasseloir Cuvée des Ceps Centenaires 2019

The Comte Leloup de Chasseloir from Domaine Chéreau Carré comes from Château de Chasseloir, in Saint-Fiacre-sur-Maine, in the heart of the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine appellation, south-east of Nantes. This estate, where the tower of a 15th-century château still stands, has 25 hectares of vines, including five hectares of vines more than a hundred years old. Facing south, these old Melon de Bourgogne vines draw from a schist subsoil.

Produced only in the best years, this cuvée is harvested entirely by hand in September, to preserve the aromas of the grapes all the way to the press. Fermentation is temperature-controlled. The wine is then aged on the lees for 9 to 10 months with bâtonnage, then matured for two to three years in bottle at the property before release.

This wine reveals notes of lemon, green apple, pear, white flowers, almond, brioche, iodine and wet stone. The years in bottle have added pastry and toasted nuances to the fruit, tightened by a saline minerality. The palate is broad and textured, thanks to the lees ageing, with precise acidity and a long, saline 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.