Cellar Circle exclusives

Silex is one of the Dagueneau signature wines, and has brought an obscure name for a type of soil - flint - into the fine wine mainstream. It is smoky, tight, and typically powerful. This is quintessential Dagueneau. It comes from various parcels around the hill of St Andelain with different exposures, making for a wholly complex, enthralling, and long-lived wine.

This comes from a similar site to the Silex parcels, but is slightly lower and north-west facing, making it fractionally cooler. This means it excels in warm vintages. It is a scintillatingly wine with outstanding length.

Pur Sang is French for thoroughbred, and his is indeed a first rate cuvée. It comes from a 3 hectare parcel of south-facing vines grown on a mixture of limestone and flint, of which roughly two are selected for Pur Sang (the balances goes into Blanc etc...). It might be south facing, but the soils here is a cool one, and the wine has a supreme amplitude. It expands across the palate before racing to a long, taut finish. It shows huge concentration, and will only benefit from bottle age. Enticing style, with weighty precision and nervous tension.

This cuvée had formerly been known as Blanc Fumé. It is a blend of equal parts marl, clay, and flinty soils from across the Pouilly-Fumé appellation. It’s hardly fitting to call this Dagueneau’s ‘entry level’ wine, but it is probably their most accessible. There is ample green fruits and a superbly expressed chiselled texture.