2014 Domaine du Carrou Sancerre 750 ml

Le Benardin, Didier Daguneau and Dominique Roger Sancerre

It was the Viking on the Harley who first directed us to Dominique Roger. We spent many summer evenings in the late 1980s in Didier Dagueneau’s backyard, tasting bottles from the Loire Valley’s best. Dagueneau was always a stickler, mincing no words as he ripped apart bottles that others found acceptable. “Acceptable” (pronounced ‘“ax-ep-tabble”) was a neglected part of the bearded winemaker’s vocabulary.

But each time we came to a bottle from another young, far-more-introverted winemaker from the other side of the river, Dagueneau would break into an almost pained, puzzled smile. “Ca c’est bon, vachement bon” (“It’s good, awfully good!”), Dagueneau said one night as we swirled Dominique Roger’s 1986 Sancerre under the stars. “Les pluparts de Sancerre sont médiocres. Mais ca? Ce vin est grandiose!”

Having revisited that 1986 last summer chez Roger, twenty-nine years later, that Sancerre is still perfectly youthful, infused with the bitter honey core that so typifies the great whites from Domaine du Carrou.

Dominique Roger and the Viking from Pouilly-Fumé shared a common winegrowing intuition. But otherwise, the two guys couldn’t have been more different. While Didier was on a constant search for the bright lights of center stage, his Sancerre equivalent remained a “terrien” — a man of the land. Even as the price of Dagueneau Silex soared to well over $100/bottle, the Roger’s continued to do as they’ve always done, taking modest 3-5% increases each year, just to cover the cost of inflation.

In each of the last four years, thanks to our longstanding friendship, WineAccess has received a small allocation from Domaine du Carrou of one of the only under-$25 white wines in the world that in nearly every vintage, ages gracefully for two to three decades. Of all the vintages we’ve tasted since that first sip Didier Dagueneau’s backyard, few have displayed as much apple-pear juiciness and youthful elegance as the recently bottled 2014.

Brilliant pale-green. Chiseled nose of apple and sweet pear, grapefruit pith, and anise, mineral and penetrating. Rich, juicy, and saline on the attack, with a mouthwatering mix of ripe apple, pear and honeysuckle. Finishes with great vibrancy and tension without any sign of bitterness or hardness. This is a tremendous effort from the brilliant Roger, a vintage that is drinking beautifully out of the gate, but will continue to add weight and honeyed complexity over the next 15-20 years.

The brilliance of Dominique Roger’s Sancerres isn’t lost on the NYC sommelier crowd, most noticeably Meilleur Sommelier du Monde, Aldo Sohm, at Le Bernardin. Just $23 today. That’s the good news. The bad? Just 20 cases are up for grabs. Don't miss out!