Edmond Vatan Sancerre Clos la Néore 2014
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🍇 Grape: Sauvignon Blanc
🌍 Country: France
📍 Region: Sancerre
🍃 Viticulture practice: Organic
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The 2014 vintage
2014 was a difficult vintage in Sancerre, cooler, wetter, demanding patience. The Vatans' late-harvest discipline rewarded the year: low yields, full physiological ripeness, and a wine of remarkable lift and precision. This is the kind of vintage where the méthode ancienne shines, because the wine relies entirely on the depth of the old vines and the integrity of the foudres rather than on weather.
100% Sauvignon Blanc from the Clos la Néore monopole. Native-yeast fermentation in century-old 600-liter foudres, aged in the same foudres, unfiltered bottling. Expect crushed limestone, white flowers, citrus zest, Meyer lemon, green apple, chamomile, almond, flinty minerality and saline undertones. Drink now through 2040, Vatan vintages routinely hold for 20-30 years.
About Edmond Vatan and Clos la Néore
Thirteen generations of the Vatan family have tended this vineyard since 1789. Clos la Néore is a 1-hectare monopole sitting in the sheltered heart of Les Monts Damnés in Chavignol, widely regarded as the greatest lieu-dit in Sancerre. The slope is nearly vertical, south-to-southeast facing, on pure terres blanches: Kimmeridgian limestone, the same vein of marine-fossil rock that gives great Chablis its hallmark minerality.
Edmond Vatan, who passed in 2022 with close to 60 vintages behind him, was Sancerre's living legend. His daughter Anne has made the wines since 2008, holding to the méthode ancienne unchanged since the French Revolution: late harvest from low-yielding old vines (~50 years), native-yeast fermentation in 600-liter wooden foudres at least a century old, aging in those same foudres, racking 2-3 times, unfiltered bottling in May when the barometric pressure is right. Roughly 4,000 bottles per year, ~500 cases, among Sancerre's rarest wines.
Critics have placed Clos la Néore alongside Raveneau and Dauvissat Chablis for sheer aging potential and depth. Twenty to thirty years is not unusual. This is Sauvignon Blanc rewritten as one of the world's great age-worthy whites.
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