The Producers Table
This is a series built around the growers, families, and estates behind the bottles. Each edition features a producer Ian Mendelsohn knows personally, has visited, and has worked alongside across a twenty-five year career in wine and spirits. These are not names on a label or bottles on a shelf. They are friends and colleagues earned through harvests, meals, and decades of shared work. What follows is not a tasting room experience. It is access built on trust.
The Slopes Sancerre Forgot: Coteaux de Giennois
Make the beautiful drive south from Paris and about twenty minutes before Sancerre you pass through a small appellation called Coteaux du Giennois. Most people drive right through on their way to the famous name but they miss meeting a family that has farmed the land since the early 1920's. Marc & Yves make wine from the same Sauvignon Blanc grape and flint soils that have made Sancerre the go to summer wine.
Fernand & Fils
Coteaux de Giennois, Loire Valley, France
Sancerre has never been more popular. It is the default white wine order in every American city, the bottle that needs no explanation, the one appellation that sells itself. That popularity has a cost. Five years ago Sancerre was an everyday wine. Today most village bottlings land on American shelves between 35 and 45 dollars, and single-vineyard wines push well past that. The wine did not change. The price did.
Drive twenty minutes north along the Loire and the story changes. The appellation is Coteaux du Giennois. Almost nobody outside France knows the name. The slopes here carry the same flint and limestone that built Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, and the grape is the same Sauvignon Blanc. After phylloxera these hillsides were abandoned. The region was judged too cool to ripen Sauvignon reliably, and the local families turned to cattle and grain. The vines disappeared. The land waited.
One of those families was the Thibaults. Fernand Thibault was born in 1899 and farmed this ground his entire life. In 1920 he bought the first tractor in the region, a machine his neighbors had never seen in a field. That instinct, respect the land and embrace the tool that works it better, never left the family.
In 1991 his grandsons Jean-Fernand and François made a bet. Sancerre and Pouilly were booming a few miles south, and the abandoned flint slopes above the Loire shared the same geology. They cleared hillsides that had sat empty since phylloxera and replanted Sauvignon Blanc. Their sons finished the job. Marc trained in New Zealand before coming home to lead the winemaking. Yves worked in South America before returning to join him. Together with their cousin Christophe they converted the vineyards to certified organic farming, a century after their great-grandfather bought that first tractor.
The estate still runs on Fernand's logic. Tradition where tradition earns its place, modernity where it serves the wine. They plow between the rows with a hydrostatic tractor that lets the driver work at a crawl without stalling, precise enough to cultivate tight to the vine. They move wine with a slow-speed pump that treats it gently instead of forcing it. Each parcel ferments separately in stainless steel. Nothing about the operation is nostalgic and nothing about it is industrial.
The blanc under the Fernand & Fils label, named for the man with the tractor, comes off silex parcels near the Pouilly-Fumé border. Flint smoke on the nose, stone fruit and citrus underneath, real cut on the finish. It is not built for the cellar. The best Sancerre carries more weight and rewards patience. This wine is leaner, brighter, and ready the day you buy it. In an Atlanta August, with a week of hundred-degree afternoons ahead, that is not a limitation. That is the assignment.
The wine world spends enormous energy chasing famous names at rising prices. The better play is knowing which unfamous names share the famous geology. A family that has farmed the same ground since before the appellation existed. Vines replanted on slopes their neighbors gave up on. The same grape, the same river, the same flint. One of the best values in the Loire, hiding twenty minutes from one of its most expensive addresses.
From The Cellar
2024 Coteaux de Giennois Blanc
A fruity aroma featuring abundant notes of peach, apricot, and melon. The well-textured palate continues with more stone fruit flavors, complemented by hints of quince and a strong mineral presence from the terroir. This wine offers excellent value, showcasing vibrant Sauvignon Blanc qualities and wonderful for a lunch with friends and family, and a treat with some fresh goat cheese.
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