Domaine de la Rossignole, Sancerre blanc 2025

A perennial favourite, this delicately flavoured, chalky, French Sauvignon is fresh and lively on the palate with intense flavours of grapefruit, herbs and green apple.

Sancerre and goat’s cheese is a match made in heaven, although the wine goes very well too with light-bodied fish like sole, or a simple roast chicken.

Sancerre is the Loire’s most famous appellation, producing distinctively smoky, flinty Sauvignon. In the Eastern Loire, in fact, many people refer to Sauvignon as blanc fumé.

Until phylloxera wiped out most of the vineyards in the mid nineteenth century, Sancerre grew mostly red grapes Gamay and Pinot Noir. But, in the aftermath of the louse infestation, Sauvignon proved more amenable to grafting than these red varieties, and so it subsequently surged ahead of its two dark-skinned rivals. (The rest is history!)

Limestone and flint are the two most important soil types in Sancerre, both having great heat-retaining and light-reflecting properties, which help the grapes to ripen in what is viticulturally a cold region.