Edmond Vatan Sancerre Clos la Néore 2016
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🍇 Grape: Sauvignon Blanc
🌍 Country: France
📍 Region: Sancerre
🍃 Viticulture practice: Organic
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The 2016 vintage
2016 was the year frost devastated the Loire. April brought catastrophic spring frosts across Sancerre, decimating yields. What survived ripened into wines of exceptional concentration and intensity. For collectors of Vatan, 2016 is one of the most sought-after recent vintages, partly because of how little was made, partly because of what the surviving fruit became.
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. Tight at first, then unfurling into intense crushed-stone minerality, Meyer lemon, white flowers, almond, and that signature Vatan saline tension. Built for the long haul. Drink 2026 through 2046.
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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