Winemaker Notes
La Noue is a 2.5 hectare plot of Pinot Noir on clay limestone and marl. Divided into seven plots and ranging in age from 10 to 60 years old it is the source for both the Noue Rosé and Rouge. The rosé is a combination of juice bled off the Sancerre Rouge after a 6-12 hour maceration combined with direct press Pinot Noir.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The very first 2020 vintage I have tasted this year comes from Stéphane Riffault and is his 2020 Sancerre Rose La Noue. The intensely salmon colored wine has changed its style toward red wine, specifically Pinot Noir, and offers an intense, concentrated and highly attractive bouquet of ripe peaches, lychees and other tropical fruits along with red berry, floral and delicate earthy aromas. Vinified in oak and to be bottled in March this year, this is a mouth-filling yet vinous Pinot with nice purity and mineral freshness. The wine is a seriously structured and finely biting Sancerre with cherry and red berry aromas on the finish. It is very much on the fruity side at this early stage but balanced, vital, fresh, highly stimulating and lean rather than big. This is a pink red wine, and I wouldn't drink it too early if you don't want to waste its true talents. Try it on Christmas at the earliest, and if it isn't this year, it's fine next year or even 2023 as well.
Barrel Sample: 91-92
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
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.