Saumur blanc Brézé AOC 2021 1500ml Magnum

This wine reveals the style of Domaine Guiberteau most directly: Chenin Blanc from the hill that gives it its name, dry, built lean at 12.5% vol., with citrus peel and crushed chalk at its core rather than richness. Fruit, salinity and drive come together here without the wine ever courting approval.

Brézé, south of Saumur, is not a village surrounded by vines but a single limestone ridge that rises noticeably above the land. Beneath the thin topsoil lies tuffeau, the porous, chalky limestone from the Turonian era: it stores water like a sponge and releases it slowly to the vines during dry summers. Over half of the estate's roughly nineteen hectares sit on this hill, with vines between four and eighty years old.

Pure Chenin Blanc. Romain Guiberteau, who abandoned his law studies and renegotiated the leased family vines plot by plot, bottled his first own vintage in 1996; he learned his craft from Nady Foucault. Fermentation proceeds spontaneously with native yeasts, ageing takes place in foudres and used barriques, often with malolactic fermentation blocked for the whites so the acidity retains its edge. The vineyards have been farmed organically since 2000.

Taut, saline, carried by crisp acidity, with green apple and white blossom over a chalky core. The finish stays cool and long.

With oysters and scallops in butter sauce, with veal sweetbreads and white asparagus, and to finish with Crottin de Chavignol.

The hill of Brézé was famous in the 19th century and then fell almost entirely into obscurity; Robert Guiberteau bought the first plots in 1954. The 1500ml magnum lets the wine age more slowly.