Sancerre Nuance 2021, Vincent Pinard

Sold out. Pinard is one of the best growers in Sancerre and a single bottle at this price was never staying long. Sauvignon Blanc is such a ubiquitous grape variety that it's easy to forget that in the right hands it is capable of greatness. Two of its finest proponents are Clement and Florent Pinard, who have been producing the wines at their father's eponymous domaine for almost two decades. The brothers leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of brilliance: green harvesting, hand-picking, sorting fastidiously, vinifying by vineyard, using selected and specifically cultured local yeasts and employing large oak barrels for elevage – many of them now from the illustrious Stockinger cooperage. The result is a range of wines, both Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, that are transparent to site, brimming with life, and surprisingly age-worthy. The domaine's flagship Flores cuvee now sees partial fermentation in oak, bringing another layer of complexity to its crisp and snappy profile. Above this sit the two cuvees Nuance and Harmonie, each raised in demi-muid, each offering more texture and breadth than the Flores bottling. At the top of the range sit the tiny single vineyard bottlings, produced from some of Bué's finest terroirs. Petit and Grand Chemarin, on Kimmeridgean Marl and limestone soils, offer fizzing line and powerful breadth respectively while the white Oxfordian limestone soils of Chene Marchand, one of the region's most iconic vineyards, represents the perfect combination of the two; a wine of depth and complexity that often requires some years to truly blossom. Generous and worldly gourmands, their own winemaking excellence is undoubtedly guided by their experiences with iconic wines from across Europe. The fact that so many of their wines sit in other great cellars, swapped bottle for bottle, is proof of the respect with which their wines are held by their peers. These are stellar Sancerre's indeed.