2020 Manoir de la Greliere Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie Loire Valley 750 ml

The word “Muscadet” provokes a Pavlovian response in us.

The second we hear it, we practically salivate at the stony, orchard-fruit-inflected flavors, light body, and zesty acidity. The white wine is tailor made to slake our thirst on any sunny day—but too often we’re disappointed by what we can find here in the States.

So sitting on the flagstone terrace of a charming cafe on the outskirts of Nantes—in Muscadet’s backyard—with wisteria dancing in the breeze, there was no discussion about what to order. But we were familiar with the five wines being poured by the glass, and we didn’t come all the way to France to drink wine we could drink at home. So we issued a challenge to our waiter: Was there something locally beloved that we hadn’t ever tried before?

With classic Nantais charisma, he returned with a bottle of Manoir de la Grelière’s Muscadet, a locals-only bottle he said was sure to blow us away. 

He was right.

The vines winemaker Xavier Branger works with today were planted up to a century ago on a mélange of prized soils: gneiss, orthogneiss, amphibolite, granite, gabbro, schist, and micaschist all run through their site. The vines’ small, gnarled trunks are trained low to the ground to absorb heat from the earth and protect them from the fierce wind whipping off the Atlantic ocean, and the wine is fermented and aged solely in stainless steel to highlight the grape and the terroir.

The result is a bottle that’s becoming a go-to for us whenever we’re after something light and fresh to drink on the porch—or with peel-and-eat shrimp at a summer cookout.