Domaine de la PépièreClisson

Loire Valley · Muscadet Sèvre et Maine · Melon de Bourgogne · 2022

Muscadet spent forty years as the cheap thing sold beside the oysters, and the price never recovered. These vineyards sit on granite and gneiss, and the wine rests on its spent yeast through the winter — the sur lie on the label — which gives something this lean its saline weight.

A family estate south of Nantes working forty hectares by hand, farming organically well before it was worth advertising. Clisson is the longest-aged cuvée, two years on the lees.