Domaine Jean-Louis Chave

Hermitage, Northern Rhone, France
Domaine Jean-Luis Chave

In the world of fine and rare wine, a few names carry a room. When I was in the auction world, nearly all of them came from Bordeaux or Burgundy. One of the rarest came from a single hill in the Rhône Valley, and from a family that traces its origins to 1481.

The Chaves started on the west bank, in Lemps, and the cellar still sits across the river from Hermitage in Mauves, under a horse chestnut in the courtyard. The first parcels on the hill came in 1865. Jean-Louis, the sixteenth generation, farms a little over nine hectares of Syrah there and makes roughly 2,000 to 2,500 cases of red a year, about what La Tâche makes. The Cuvée Cathelin, in the years it is made, comes to about 2,500 bottles, fewer than half of Romanée-Conti.

Their Hermitage is a blend, and that is the whole argument. With the white, the family farms about thirteen hectares on the hill in fourteen parcels, and each one is pressed, fermented and aged on its own. Bessards brings granite and the frame. Le Méal brings warmth. L'Hermite, Péléat and Beaume fill in what sits between. The precision is in the assembly.

In 2003, around a sale we held that year, I sat a small table of private clients at a small French restaurant near Union Square I went to often. We opened six vintages of the Hermitage, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994 and 1995, and three of the Cuvée Cathelin, 1990, 1991 and 1995. Gérard Chave made the 1985 through the 1991. By 1994 his son was beside him. Nine bottles that almost never reach an auction, ten years of one family's work, on one table.

I met Jean-Louis twice, both times in New York. Each time he talked about Hermitage and blending, and each time he turned the conversation to Mon Coeur. He wanted to know how people were reacting to it. Mon Coeur came out of Sélection, the label he built with his wife, Erin, to take the family's standards beyond the hill. It was a young wine then, first made in 1998: Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre from old vines in the southern villages, Vinsobres among them. They made it to be opened on a Tuesday night, without waiting fifteen years. The man who makes one of the rarest wines in France was most curious about his least expensive one.

Later Jean-Louis and Erin brought Sélection back to the hill with a Hermitage of its own, Farconnet. Erin is a driving force behind the Sélection side, and the two of them hold it to the same standard as the domaine. The name belongs to the family the Chaves bought their Bessards parcel from, in the time of Jean-Louis's great-grandfather. The difference between the two bottles is address and time. The domaine wine is built around Bessards at the heart of the hill. Farconnet comes mostly from Diognières at the foot of it, alluvial ground packed with small pebbles that gives the wine its spice, with Péléat above for finesse and Greffieux, beside Le Méal, for structure from river stones the glaciers left behind.

Time is the other difference. The domaine Hermitage spends 18 to 20 months in barrel, 10 to 20 percent of it new, and is built for decades. Farconnet ferments in tonneaux and steel, then spends about two years in barrel, mostly older wood but 20% new, so the fruit shows years sooner. What does not change is the hand. Parcel by parcel, the same people decide what goes in the bottle and what does not, with the same patience that put nine bottles on a table near Union Square.

When the weather turns I move to the Rhône. I buy one bottle of the domaine Hermitage each year. Mon Coeur is a staple in my house every fall and winter.

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FROM THE CELLAR

The 1985 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Gérard's wine from a warm, generous year. Smoked meat, cassis, black olive and pepper over a velvet texture, with a firmer frame than the vintages that followed. In that era barrel selections differed between importers, and bottles of the same vintage could vary. At a sale, that is the detail that matters most and gets noticed least.

The 1989 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave A hot, dry vintage that refuses to act like one. Red fruit and flint, and a wine that ages at a crawl. Next to the 1990 it is the quieter of the two, and the one that keeps something back.

The 1990 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave The power vintage. Dark plum, cassis, black tea and bergamot, and a tarry finish. This is the tannin that made Gérard set aside the Cathelin, and tasting the two side by side is the clearest lesson in what blending does on this hill.

The 1991 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave The sleeper. A poor year in the south, so the market walked past the whole Rhône, while the north made some of its finest wine of the decade. Red currant, dried cherry and spice, fine tannins, and acidity that keeps it moving. The first vintage under temperature-controlled fermentation. Many who have tasted both prefer it to the 1990.

The 1994 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave The last of the wet years, and the proof of the blend. Earth, soy, red currant and rosemary, lighter and earlier to open than the vintages around it, and still fine and fresh. A difficult year in other hands. Here it is elegant.

The 1995 Hermitage, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Jean-Louis says it tasted skinny for years and was overlooked because of it. Time filled it in. Plum skin, dried cherry and blood orange, more flesh than anyone expected, and acidity that makes your mouth water.

The 1990 Ermitage Cuvée Cathelin, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave The first Cathelin, about 2,500 bottles. Bessards-led, all new oak, built to carry the tannin of the year. Fire and density at the core and a refined texture around it. Against the classic 1990 it trades some of the stone for power, and that trade is the argument about which bottle you prefer.

The 1991 Ermitage Cuvée Cathelin, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Again about 2,500 bottles. Young, it was opaque and dense, cassis, smoke, vanilla and flowers. With age it has gone the other way, toward rose petal, crushed stone and a faint gaminess, almost Burgundian in its balance. The rarest bottle on the table, and the one that rewarded patience most.

The 1995 Ermitage Cuvée Cathelin, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Red and black currant, Asian spice, scorched earth and blood. Smoky, meaty, mineral, with a texture lighter than its depth suggests. Father and son, in the year the skinny vintage turned out to be anything but.

From the Sélection

2024 Côtes du Rhône Mon Coeur, Jean-Louis Chave Sélection
Grenache and Mourvèdre from old vines around Vinsobres and Cairanne, fermented in steel and given a year in used barrels. 2024 was a cool, wet year in the Rhône, and it shows as freshness rather than weight. Dark berry fruit, a granitic edge, and ripe tannin that stays out of the way. Open it with wild mushrooms, pheasant or a braise. It was made to be opened tonight, and that was always the point.

2024 Saint-Joseph Offerus, Jean-Louis Chave Sélection
Syrah from granite around Mauves, Tournon and Saint-Jean-de-Muzols, with young vines from the family's own replanted slopes, raised in neutral barrels. Violets, cassis and black cherry over charcoal and graphite, and a cool lift of mint the vintage brings forward. Supple tannin, and a wine that moves easily across the palate. This is the granite of the family's home bank, across the river from the hill.

2022 Hermitage Farconnet, Jean-Louis Chave Sélection
Diognières, Greffieux and Péléat, fruit bought from neighbors on the hill, mostly destemmed and aged two years in barrel, about a fifth of it new. 2022 was a hot, dry summer, and Farconnet carries that sun as depth, not heaviness. Dark fruit and spice from the Diognières pebbles, structure from Greffieux, finesse from Péléat. Open now with an hour in a decanter, or hold it well into the next decade.

Paolo Scavino

Barolo, Castiglione Falletto, Piedmont, Italy

I met Enrico Scavino at Christie's in New York in 2004 when he came to New York with his eldest daughter, Enrica, to introduce the 2000 Bric dël Fiasc. They were in town to pour it at the Wine Spectator grand tasting as they had scored it 98 points, and I had the privilege to sit down with them for a lunch and a tasting I still remember to this day.

Enrico had every reason to spend that lunch talking about the wine and that incredible the score. However, he spent it on his family, on the land his father had farmed, and on the history of Castiglione Falletto and the villages around it. He was generous with his time and his passion was infectious. That lunch was my introduction to the estate, and his love of Barolo and Piedmont has never left me.

A few years later, while I was in Las Vegas Enrica came through town and it was wonderful to talk about that lunch and enjoy some of her wines and others. In what felt like a full circle, Mattia Benevello, who runs Scavino's export, sat down with me over four 2021 Barolos in magnum.

We talked about the wine and the family, because at Scavino you cannot separate the two. Enrico was passionate about every one of the 20 crus he worked, and he made it his mission to make wine in a way that let each one show what it was. That is why every Scavino Barolo is made exactly the same way: the same fermentation, the same eight to ten days on the skins, the same large casks. Hold the cellar still, and the only thing left to taste is the ground.

Enrico also designed his own fermenter for the cru Barolos, and Mattia explained it with a teabag. An iron net holds the skins under the wine while the wine moves through them. The skins never break, so the extraction stays gentle and still goes deep.

Ravera came first. It is the family's highest vineyard, up in Novello, and thirty years ago it struggled to ripen. Warmer summers have put flesh behind its cool, herbal style, and Mattia's line on it stuck with me. Not every change is a bad change.

The second wine came with a story about loss. For 33 years the family rented a parcel of Cannubi, one of the most famous names in Barolo and the only vineyard they ever leased. In 2018 the owner died without direct heirs and the lease ended. “Carobric”, their blend of Cannubi, Rocche dell'Annunziata and Bric dël Fiasc, ended with it. That same year they bought into Bussia, in Monforte, at the highest point of the cru and the only part of it on sand. Bussia usually means power. The 2021 Vigna Fantini, its first vintage, was about lift.

Prapò is the family's corner of Serralunga d'Alba, under a hectare on a steep slope that runs off the Cerretta hill. Serralunga makes Barolo's most powerful wines. Here the exposure ripens the fruit fully, so the power arrives with flesh on it.

Bric dël Fiasc came last. It sits beside the cellar at the center of the zone, and Mattia drew a circle around it on the map, three or four kilometers wide. Cannubi, Cerequio, Brunate, Rocche dell'Annunziata, Villero, Monprivato and Rocche di Castiglione all fell inside it. The family has owned the vineyard since the estate began in 1921. In 1978 Enrico and his father bottled it alone for the first time, when most Barolo was still a blend of villages. It was the wine Enrico and Enrica carried to New York in 2004.

 Enrico died in 2024. Tasting those 2021s, I kept thinking about how proud he would be. Enrica and Elisa have worked beside him for over twenty years, and they are doing what he did. They hold the cellar to his method, they keep pushing to make better wine, and they are building something to hand to the next generation.

A private visit to Paolo Scavino is not a tasting room stop. Visits are by appointment only and built around the land, the vineyards and the table. You taste the crus side by side, all made the same way, so every difference in the glass comes from the ground. You stand at the fermenter Enrico designed and see the net that keeps the skins under the wine. Then you walk out to Bric dël Fiasc, next to the cellar, the vineyard the family has owned since 1921.

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FROM THE CELLAR

2021 Barolo Ravera, Paolo Scavino (Novello). About three hectares at 430 meters, facing east, and the last vineyard the family picks every year. Sant'Agata marl with a strong streak of limestone. Balsamic, menthol, sage and white pepper over red fruit, with cool mineral tannin and high acid. The freshness holds even in hot years, which is why demand for Ravera has climbed for fifteen years.

2021 Barolo Bussia Vigna Fantini, Paolo Scavino, (Monforte d'Alba). About 450 meters, the highest of Bussia's twelve sub zones, with vines planted between 2006 and 2010. Elisa treats the block as experimental because of the genetic mix in the vines, Nebbiolo Rosé among them. Menthol, blood orange, spearmint, dried cherry and lilac over refined, almost austere tannin.

2021 Barolo Prapò, Paolo Scavino, Nebbiolo (Serralunga d'Alba). 370 meters, facing south and southeast, replanted in 2010 with a massal selection chosen for loose clusters and low yields. Iron-rich sand over gray marl gives the wine its rusty mineral edge. Plum, licorice, dark chocolate, graphite and iron, with full Serralunga tannin. Only a handful of producers bottle Prapò.

2021 Barolo Bric dël Fiasc, Paolo Scavino, Nebbiolo (Castiglione Falletto). The family farms about a third of the small Fiasco cru, on vines planted in 1979, 1984 and 2009, where limestone and sandstone cross and iron-rich water rises from deep underground. Dark cherry, iron, dried herbs, white pepper, orange peel and geranium, with broad tannin and real perfume on top.

MV Vino Rosso, Paolo Scavino, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto and Merlot (Piedmont). To keep the Barolos strict, the family holds back the fruit of its younger vines, and this is where that fruit goes. The blend breaks the appellation rules, so it carries the simplest label in Italy, table wine. Stainless steel only, no oak, made in tiny quantities. Red cherry, violet and spice, juicy and supple. A wine for any night of the week from the house that bottled Bric dël Fiasc in 1978.

Langhe Nebbiolo, Paolo Scavino, Nebbiolo (La Morra). Two single vineyards in La Morra, Bricco Manescotto, planted in 1960 and 1968, and Annunziata, planted in 1997. It is the one wine in the cellar made differently from the Barolos, on purpose. A cool, gentle fermentation, five days on the skins, then eight months in neutral oak. Crushed flowers, red cherry, blood orange and dried herbs over a fine, lifted tannin. It is the bottle winemakers and their teams in Barolo open on an ordinary night.

Au Bon Climat

Au Bon Climat
Santa Maria Valley, Santa Barbara County, California

Jim Clendenen was one of the first winemakers I ever met. It was 1998, a few months into my job as cellar master at Windows on the World, and he came up to the 107th floor to run a staff training. He tasted the wine team first, then the entire front of house. I was fresh out of culinary school, tasting next to some of the most experienced palates in the country. Everyone around the table had something to say about every glass. It was intimidating, and I was shy about offering an opinion in that company. Jim asked for mine anyway.

Somewhere in the lineup he turned to me and asked what I thought of the wine. I told him I liked it, but I did not know enough to say much more. He would not let it go. “You might not have the technical knowledge,” he said, “or have tasted all the Pinot Noirs you ever will. That takes time. But your opinion is yours alone.” He told us he made wine for everyone, the newcomer and the expert, and wanted my opinion. By then Jim had spent sixteen years preaching the beauty of Santa Barbara Pinot Noir at a time when most professionals only cared about Burgundy. He had a room full of those professionals ready to tell him what they thought, and he wanted to hear from the guy a few months into the business I have been in a lot of rooms since that day, and the producers worth knowing all do what Jim did. They ask questions to everyone. Most never learn to.

Jim left UC Santa Barbara in 1974 with a pre-law degree and a plan for law school. Six months in Europe in 1977, through Bordeaux, Champagne and Burgundy, ended the plan. In 1982 he and Adam Tolmach started Au Bon Climat in a former dairy barn outside Los Alamos. There was no money to hire anyone, so the two of them did all of it. Tolmach left to start Ojai Winery, and in 1990 Jim moved the operation onto Bien Nacido Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley, into a plain building he shared with Bob Lindquist of Qupé for the next three decades.

 Inside that building Jim ran a Burgundy cellar. Open-top fermenters, whole clusters, malolactic in small barrels, long contact on the lees, no filtration. He picked for balance and said so to anyone in range. If you have seen Sideways, the Pinot Noir Miles cannot stop talking about is the style Jim had been making in Santa Barbara County for more than twenty years before the film came out.

Every day in that building there was lunch. Jim cooked. When he traveled, Enrique Rodriguez, his first employee, cooked. Cellar crew, growers, importers and visiting winemakers sat at one long table, and the bottles kept coming. Henri Jayer ate there. So did Jancis Robinson. Gavin Chanin, who spent a decade as Jim's assistant, said Jim mentored half of Santa Barbara County.

 I sat at that table twice while Jim was alive. He died on May 15, 2021, and the next time I sat there was that July, a week before his celebration of life, with Susan beside me. Bob Lindquist was there, and so were Enrique and the whole wine team. We opened a bottle of sparkling wine and toasted Jim at his own table. Then, the way it went at every lunch, the bottles kept appearing. New vintages, old vintages, his and other people's, a Burgundy or two.

 Jim Adelman, who has made the wines since 1991, and Enrique Rodriguez now own a share of the winery, with more than sixty years at Au Bon Climat between them. Jim's daughter Isabelle works on the business side, and his son Knox joined the cellar in 2022. Each has a Pinot Noir named for them. The wines taste the way Jim made them taste.

 I have been drinking his wines for twenty-eight years. His Santa Barbara Pinot Noir is a staple in my house and has been part of every wine program I have run.

 A visit to Au Bon Climat through Vineyard Confidential goes to the winery on Bien Nacido, not the tasting room in town. You walk the hillside blocks that have fed these wines since 1990 with the people who farm and ferment them. You taste from barrel with the team that stood beside Jim for thirty years, and then you sit down at the table where he fed the wine world. By the end of lunch someone will ask what you think, and they will mean it.

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FROM THE CELLAR

2023 Chardonnay, Au Bon Climat (Santa Barbara)
Whole-cluster pressed, aged in neutral French oak on its lees. Citron, apple blossom and grapefruit, with bright acid and no butter.

2024 Pinot Noir, Au Bon Climat (Santa Barbara). Bien Nacido, North Canyon, Rancho Real, Kick On and Los Alamos, each picked in several passes, eight months in François Frères barrels, 13.5 percent alcohol. This is the wine Jim built to prove balance does not require a special occasion. Red currant and blood orange, bay leaf and white pepper, and wonderful freshness.

2024 Pinot Noir, La Bauge Au-dessus, Au Bon Climat (Santa Maria Valley). The winery translates the name as a wild party upstairs. It began on the hillsides of Bien Nacido, and once his own Le Bon Climat vineyard proved itself he started blending the best lots of both every year. Five-ton open-top fermenters punched down daily, two years in barrel, egg white fining, bottled unfiltered. Cherry and cranberry up front, rose petal, earth and spice underneath.

Avignonesi

Avignonesi
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy

The Estate

Avignonesi was founded in 1974 by the Avignonesi family who have been residents of the town since the sixteenth century. In the period that followed the winemaking was the kind that ambitious Tuscan estates did then, which was prove they could compete with international grapes and new oak. Some of their wines defined the period. However, Virginie Saverys, a Belgian attorney and trained winemaker, purchased the estate in 2009 and chose a different pat.  She immediately started the transition of the 175-hectare estate to organics and achieved certification in 2016. It was certified biodynamic in 2019 and is the largest estate of the kind in Italy.

The part that matters in the glass however, is what she did to their flagship wine Vino Nobile. The appellation lets you put thirty percent of something else in the bottle, and most producers use some of it. She took it to 100 percent Sangiovese. Tuscany sells itself to Americans in three names. Chianti, Brunello, and the Super Tuscans. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano was in the founding class of Italian DOCGs in 1980, the same year as Brunello, on a hill twenty miles east of it, but for years Vino Nobile was not regarded as highly. Vierginie was determined to change that, and I believe she has.

Vin Santo

The Vinsantaia at Avignonesi has no temperature control, and that is the entire point of it. It is a small building that is mostly height, and it is full of caratelli, fifty liter barrels sealed with wax and left alone. The room is allowed to freeze in January and cook in August because the swing is what drives the fermentation. I have been in a great many cellars. I have never been in another room that smells like that one, and Susan and I were there in the summer of 2018. I can still call it up.

We were too late in the year to see the fruit hanging. That happens earlier, whole bunches strung up in the appassitoio for three to six months until they give up half their volume, and people who have seen it describe rows of drying grapes like drapes across a room. We got the empty loft and the story. Then we got the wine, which is the part I was not prepared for.

They poured the regular Vin Santo first, which is a serious wine on its own terms. Then the export manager went and got the Occhio di Pernice, and he did not bring one bottle. He brought 1990, 1998, 2001 and 2005, in the 375s, and poured a vertical of a wine that almost nobody gets to taste twice in a lifetime, let alone four times in an afternoon. The 2005 was the current release and next to the other three it was an infant, and it was still one of the best things I have ever had in a glass. I have had Sauternes and Port going back a hundred and fifty years. I had never had a Vin Santo like that, and I had certainly never had four of them side by side.

Occhio di Pernice means eye of the partridge, which is a description of the color. It is made from Sangiovese rather than the white grapes that go into most Vin Santo, and everything about it is deliberately inefficient. The dried fruit is pressed at roughly half the weight it started at. The juice goes into the caratelli with a madre, a mother yeast the family has kept going for generations, and then it ferments for anywhere from one to four years depending on what the weather decides to do. It sits for more than a decade after that, sealed, while over half of it evaporates through the wood. What comes out is a wine of about twelve and a half percent alcohol and a couple thousand half bottles a year.

The next generation

This has always been a family affair. Virginie's son Basile was the COO and now running the estate. Eline, her daughter, opened two wine bars in London before opening another in Antwerp. She also launched the first new label of the estate called Ventisei. Ventisei is Italian for twenty six, the age she was when the first wine bar opened, from that fruit on the estate, blended to her own taste but made with the same exacting standards. The estates and people I keep going back to and support all have one or more wines like this. They have a bottle that makes the reputation, priced at what a reputation costs. What separates the ones I actually buy from the rest is the other half of the sentence. Same crew, same ground, same farming, going into a bottle you open on a Tuesday without thinking about it.

 I started drinking Ventisei not long after it appeared, and then I started programming it. I put the Rosso by the glass in Atlanta, which is the hardest test a wine at that price ever faces. It has to be good on the fourth night the bottle is open, it has to work against a kitchen sending out five different things at once, and a guest has to want a second glass. It did all three, every service, for as long as I poured it.

What a private visit is
A private visit to Avignonesi through Vineyard Confidential is the day we had, not the tasting room version of it. You walk plots at different elevations with someone who can tell you why the same Sangiovese tastes like two different grapes three hundred meters apart. You have a wonderful lunch on the terrace overlooking the Tuscan countryside and vineyards only a few feet from you.

The final part of the day is experiencing the sights and smells of the Vinsantaia, and then taste some of that magical elixir which will sear the memories in your brain forever.

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FROM THE CELLAR

The 2021 Toscana Rosso, Ventisei IGT
This is Eline's wine and an argument for restraint in a region that spent the 1990s proving it could make big wine. Sangiovese led with small parts of Merlot and Cabernet, fermented in stainless with indigenous yeast and a share of the fruit left whole, then raised in tank. Nothing touches wood. Wild strawberry, sour cherry, rosehip, low alcohol, fine tannin, a bay leaf note at the end. Serve it cool. It tastes like where it came from because nothing was added to make it taste like anywhere else.

The 2022 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Avignonesi DOCG
is 100 percent Sangiovese, which is the whole argument in one number. Red and black cherry over dried herb and iron, tannin that is firm without being hard, and the kind of acidity you only get off vineyards high enough to cool down at night. This is what the hill does when someone farms it properly and then gets out of the way.

1990 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
This was the last glass we tried, and my reaction was almost visceral. It pours incredibly slowly and the aromas were a mix of crème brulee, molasses that lasted forever. We left the estate 30 minutes after the pour and the glass still smelled incredible. This wine belongs in any conversation about the finest dessert wine ever made.

1998 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
Deep ruby to black, toffee on the nose, scents of violets and black fig and date, Incredible flavor and concentration but with the acidity to back it up.. This is just decadence defined. molten treacle toffee on the nose, enormous sugar carried by good acidity. Franco Ziliani, 16.5 of 20: dark ruby, rich and intense, warm and long, with surprising fresh fruit notes.

2001 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
One of the best dessert wines I have ever had. It’s been described as a “singular work of art” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s caramel, maple syrup, espresso bean, licorice, candied fruit and dried fig, smoky and savory on the nose, and built like a tank.

2005 Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice
Dried fig, date, molasses and caramel, hints of cardamom and cumin with astounding acidity that will keep it fresh for years.

Feudo Montoni

Feudo Montoni
Cammarata, Sicily, Italy

In the early 2010s there was a restaurant in Chelsea called Eolo: Sicilia a Tavola. The chef and owner was Melissa Muller, a New Yorker whose grandmother came from a Sicilian village of six hundred people, and who spent every childhood summer there. Eolo was purely Sicilian, down to a wine list that carried nothing else and earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence four years running. The dish I cannot forget is her casarecce with fava beans and fresh ricotta, twisted noodles holding tender favas, olive oil, garlic, and wild herbs, the ricotta cutting the earthy, faintly bitter edge of the beans. With that plate Melissa put a white wine in front of me I had never heard of. Catarratto, from an estate called Feudo Montoni in the island's high interior. I have been drinking it ever since.

Eolo is gone now, and the reason it closed is the best part of the story. While researching her cookbook, Sicily: The Cookbook: Recipes Rooted in Traditions, Melissa traveled the island and visited Feudo Montoni, where she met the winemaker, Fabio Sireci. She went back and forth between two lives for a while, then chose one. She married Fabio, left New York, and moved to the center of Sicily. Today she co-manages the estate's global sales and commercial work, and the two of them are in the United States often for the trade. I have been trying to cook that fava dish ever since, and with her book I get close. What I cannot reproduce is the way her kitchen served it. The chef who first put this wine in front of me now helps run the estate that makes it.

Feudo Montoni dates to 1469. Rosario Sireci bought the property in the late 1800s after discovering the wealth of ancient vines growing there, and passed it to his son Elio, who passed it to Fabio, the third generation. Fabio trained as an engineer and could have taken a career on the mainland. He came back to the farm instead and learned winemaking at his father's side. His and Melissa's two sons are the fourth generation.

The estate sits in the high interior between Palermo and Agrigento, with vineyards climbing toward 2,300 feet, fanned by winds off the Madonie and Sicani mountains. For centuries the vineyards have been surrounded by durum wheat fields that act as a natural barrier, an island within an island. The farming is certified organic and older than the certification. Nothing is fertilized. Fava beans and peas are sown between the rows to fix nitrogen in the soil, the same beans at the center of the dish that started this story. Sicily's reputation is heat, ripeness, and weight. Montoni's altitude and isolation produce the opposite: freshness, acidity, and restraint.

The Masso vineyard takes its name from the rocky, sandy, iron-rich stone it grows in. It sits at 700 meters, facing east, planted to Catarratto vines now more than fifty years old, grafted by hand onto wild rootstock in the old Sicilian manner. Catarratto is the most planted white grape on the island, concentrated in the west and mostly anonymous. Grown here, in the center, at elevation, on that iron and sand, it becomes something else entirely. This is the argument for the cru concept Fabio works by: one vineyard, one grape, bottled on its own because the ground earns it.

A private visit to Feudo Montoni is not a tasting room stop. Visits are by appointment only and built around the family's table, in the middle of an estate the Sirecis have farmed for three generations.

From The Cellar

2024  Catarratto del Masso, Feudo Montoni
This wine is a great case for why altitude and soil matter more than a grape's reputation. Citrus and mountain herbs over a saline, mineral finish, with acidity that keeps every glass asking for the next one. It is light to medium in body and completely unforced. Most Catarratto disappears into blends and bulk. This one comes off a single iron-rich vineyard at 700 meters, and you taste the address, not the variety.

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The Slopes Sancerre Forgot: Coteaux de Giennois

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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