Wines on Allocation

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, like 2022. It is a scintillatingly wine with outstanding length.

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, like 2022. It is a scintillatingly wine with outstanding length.

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.

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.

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.

Astéroïde comes from several rows of vines that are not grafted and are 25 years old. Always harvested very ripe, this wine is produced in limited quantities, about 600 bottles per year. On the palate, the Astéroïde is mind-blowing, its crystalline power and aromatic intensity layer upon the notes of citrus and offers a pure mineral expression.

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 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.

Clos du Calvaire is Didier Dagueneau’s newest and rarest site—just a stone’s throw from Silex, sharing the same flinty soils and biodynamic farming, but bottled separately for its distinct personality. The vineyard is literally walled in (clos), and the wine feels that way too: tighter, more linear, and razor-sharp. The 2021 vintage is cool and precise, but bursting with energy. Expect grapefruit skin, crushed rock, lemon verbena, and smoky minerality, all layered over a taut, chalky core. Tension, texture, and unbelievable site expression.

This special wine is a unique bottling to commemorate the 10 years since the great Didier Dagueneau passed away. It is a selection of some of the finest vines withint the Silex parcels, and offers a few lucky followers of the estate the chance to own something truly rare.

Another terres blanches site, this is in the small hamlet of Amigny, and is considered by many as the defining wine of the Cotat collection. It often needs the longest time in the cellar, too. With time it will reveal a level of volume and density uncommon in Sauvignon Blanc, taking the variety far beyond its usual earthly bounds.

This is the defining site of Sancerre, and akin to a grand cru in the appellation. It is the steep slope that runs the length of the Chavignol village and its south-facing aspect and terres blanches soils produce the appellation’s most powerful and long-lived wines. François’s wine perfectly captures the power and finesse of this great site, with statuesque poise.

This terres blanches site rises up behind the village of Chavignol and although it is only shared amongst a few growers, is one of the most famous sites in Sancerre. It shares the power of neighbouring Monts Damnés, with a tender, fleshy fruit and floral texture on the body.

For many, François Cotat is the defining name of Sancerre. Even fine wine afficionado who claim not to like Sauvignon Blanc love his wines. Caillottes is his most accessible and up front wine, coming from a blend of parcels around the village of Chavignol, on the chalky limestone soils. Even so, this has the finesse and poise to age for many years.