2023 Domaine Riffault Cortem a Batis Sancerre 750 ml

Crafted by the Riffaults—one of the great names of Sancerre, up there with the Vacheron and Crochet clans—this electrifying white wine is eked out from 20 tiny parcels in the smallest hamlet in the appellation, Chaudoux. It’s a beautifully expressive and precise Sancerre that sommeliers on both sides of the Atlantic regularly vie for and hoard. 

The estate’s vineyards conceal a jigsaw puzzle of geology. Here you can cross millennia with a single step, from Kimmeridgian marls that date back 150 million years to the younger pebbly limestone known as caillottes. A single sip of this green-gold beauty is similarly expansive, as refreshing and crisp as the first lemonade of summer, and as cool and mineral as a Montana stream in springtime. 

A sommelier in San Diego introduced it to us as “the Incredible Shrinking Sancerre”: “Every year it’s one of the best Sauvignon Blancs we taste,” he said, “and every year it’s harder to get an allocation. People are starting to catch on.”

Hooked by that initial mouthwatering encounter, we spent half a year working connections in the region to get on the good side of Bertrand Riffault, who took over the winery from his father Pierre in 2005. Long-haired and lanky, with a goatee and piercing dark eyes, Bertrand looks like he should be fronting a prog-rock band. 

In fact, he plays bass for a traditional French folk music troupe. But we’re inclined to see true artistry in his touch with assembling wines from across Domaine Riffault’s diverse terroirs, balancing the intense fruit and freshness of the caillottes soils with the gunsmoke complexity of the estate’s flinty terroir.