Domaine Régis Minet, Sauvignon Blanc Vieilles Vignes, Pouilly-Fumé, Loire, France 2023

Stunning old vine Pouilly-Fumé. Sauvignon Blanc has many incarnations throughout the world, but even in the Loire Valley — the grape’s spiritual home — Pouilly Fumé represents a very distinctive example. While it shares the Kimmeridgian limestone of its neighbor Sancerre, its soils also contain fragments of flint, which are presumably responsible for Pouilly Fumé’s characteristic goût de pierre à fusil, or gunflint taste.

Régis Minet, a second-generation vigneron who already boasts almost forty harvests under his belt, is always happy to demonstrate how striking together two pieces of flint from his vineyard creates the smoky gunflint aroma typically associated with the wine. The estate is made up of 10 hectares of vines planted in ideal soils with Kimmeridgian limestone, marl, and clay. This precise, mineral-driven effort is fermented with ambient yeast and does not see any oak, spending six months on the fine lees in stainless steel.

Lively, crisp, floral, and beautifully mineral. Medium bodied with crushed oyster shell notes atop ripe orchard fruit and bright acidity.