Winemaker Notes
This wine can be enjoys with a great variety of dishes : Asian recipes, whitemeats like veal escalope stuffed with prawns and marjoram. As for cheese, aMunster would do a great match.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2019 Henri Bourgeois Sancerre La Côte des Monts Damnés is an outstanding Sauvignon Blanc. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers authentic aromas and flavors of wild leaves, herbs, ripe citrus, and dried earth. Serve it with a bowl of steamed clams in a savory broth. (Tasted: April 26, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
The precipitous slope of the Monts Damnés vineyard is beautifully positioned to produce great wine. With its balance between rich intensity and crisp acidity, this citrus-avored, mineral-textured wine is just approaching drinkability. To bring out all its character, wait until 2021.
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Wine Spectator
On the slightly richer side, this offers melon, lemon curd and gooseberry gelée notes lined with sea salt accents and hints of toast. This gets grippy midpalate, but the acidity cuts through, bringing out freshness through the finish. Best from 2022 through 2028.
Capable of a vast array of styles, Sauvignon Blanc is a crisp, refreshing variety that equally reflects both terroir and varietal character. Though it can vary depending on where it is grown, a couple of commonalities always exist—namely, zesty acidity and intense aromatics. This variety is of French provenance. Somm Secret—Along with Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc is a proud parent of Cabernet Sauvignon. That green bell pepper aroma that all three varieties share is no coincidence—it comes from a high concentration of pyrazines (herbaceous aromatic compounds) inherent to each member of the family.
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.