100% Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire, France.

"For Americans, Pouilly-Fumé is probably most famous for inspiring Robert Mondavi to call his Sauvignon blanc Fumé Blanc. It is a lovely name. But as usual here at KLWM, we invite you to look back to what launched such a masterly marketing idea. Fumé means smoky, and Pouilly-sur-Loire is the neat little town on the banks of the Loire where the stony vineyard soil bestows upon the Sauvignon a smoky or gunflint aspect.

     The Loire there is broad and quite shallow, full of islands and constantly shifting sandbars and channels. Motorboats were useless in that stretch of the river until our winemaker, motorcyclist Régis Minet, built himself a flat-bottomed craft with a barely submerged propeller. Only it and pole-propelled skiffs can navigate the Loire there. When I visit to taste each year, he insists on taking me for a ride, so to speak. We zoom along, scraping over the sandbars, veering sharply to avoid sunken tree trunks and wine buyers, ducking to avoid hanging vines and branches, while I act cool, smiling blissfully, hanging on with whitened knuckles and pounding heart, thinking that if l told you, my clients, that I was risking life and limb to get a decent Pouilly-Fumé into your glasses, you would not take me seriously.

     What I find unusual and remarkable about Minet’s old-vines cuvée is its class. I know what today’s Sancerres and Pouilly-Fumés taste like. One will perhaps be more or less aromatic, another grassier, another lighter or heavier, higher or lower in acidity . . . But how many have the class and exquisite harmony of Minet’s? Everything is in balance, there are no rough or sharp edges, nothing to set your teeth gnashing in frustration. Don’t you just love class? This is just pure, delicious, classic, definitive Pouilly-Fumé."