Domaine Hubert Brochard Sancerre Rouge 2018
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Sancerre Rouge shows aromas and flavors of red berries, herbs, and violets. The palate is rich with ripe fruit and medium weight with bright acidity and fine tannins. Aging in used French barrique brings subtle notes of toast and baking spices.
Pinot Noir might be the world’s most flexible food wine. The wine’s high acidity, medium body, medium alcohol, and low tannins make it very food-friendly. Pinot Noir, with its earthy and sometimes gamey character, is a classic partner to roasted game birds, grilled duck breast, and dishes that feature mushrooms, black truffles, or are rich in umami.
Domaine Hubert Brochard produces classically styled Sancerre blanc, rosé, and rouge from their family-owned winery in Chavignol. Aimée Brochard inherited her father’s vines in the early 1900s, growing grapes and raising goats to produce cheese with the help of her husband Hubert. The domaine is now run by the fifth and sixth generation of Brochards with 152 acres under vine in Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, and Vin de Pays du Val de Loire. Today, brothers Daniel, Jean-François, and Benoît Brochard run the domaine with the help of Daniel’s daughters, Caroline and Anne-Sophie, and produce wines that express their region’s terroir.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Marked by its charming hilltop village in the easternmost territory of the Loire, Sancerre is famous for its racy, vivacious, citrus-dominant Sauvignon blanc. Its enormous popularity in 1970s French bistros led to its success as the go-to restaurant white around the globe in the 1980s.
While the region claims a continental climate, noted for short, hot summers and long, cold winters, variations in topography—rolling hills and steep slopes from about 600 to 1,300 feet in elevation—with great soil variations, contribute the variations in character in Sancerre Sauvignon blancs.
In the western part of the appellation, clay and limestone soils with Kimmeridgean marne, especially in Chavignol, produce powerful wines. Moving closer to the actual town of Sancerre, soils are gravel and limestone, producing especially delicate wines. Flint (silex) soils close to the village produce particularly perfumed and age-worthy wines.
About ten percent of the wines claiming the Sancerre appellation name are fresh and light red wines made from Pinot noir and to a lesser extent, rosés. While not typically exported in large amounts, they are well-made and attract a loyal French following.