2022 J. de Villebois Pouilly-Fume Loire 750 ml

When The Wall Street Journal called Pouilly-Fumé the “French Sauvignon Blanc we should be drinking more often,” they were thinking of bottles like this one from J. de Villebois. It’s top-tier Pouilly-Fumé: compact, sleek, and focused, with excellent precision—all the attributes we look for in Sauvignon Blanc from central France.

It took us a long time to secure our first allocation, and last year our members loved it as much as we did: They rewarded the ‘21 with a blazing 4.3-star rating that placed it within a fraction of a point behind our top-scoring Sancerres. As one member wrote, this is “a very classy and classic expression of Sauvignon Blanc. Elegance in a glass.”

Just around the riverbend from the town of Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé takes its name from the hint of reductive smokiness—like a just-struck match or flint—that’s a trademark of wines like this one. While its neighbor is famous for limestone and clay soils, Pouilly-Fumé also features flinty silex in its geologic mélange. In the hands of top producers like Villebois, that soil diversity can help deliver complexity in the glass.

It’s a real shame that there’s hardly enough of this wine to go around, because it’s a stunner. Villebois ferments and ages theirs in stainless-steel tanks, a classic technique that allows the purity of Sauvignon Blanc to express itself without the intrusion of any oak flavors. The result is delightful, and we’re so glad we could lock in an allocation for Wine Access members.