Sancerre

I drove up from the Loire plain on a morning in late September when the fog was still thick in the valley and Sancerre was already above it — the village on its hill poking out of the white into clear air and low sun, like something that had decided the ordinary world below was not its concern. The road switchbacks through vineyards, and by the time I reached the village the grapes were nearly ripe, the Sauvignon Blanc leaves just beginning to turn. A smell of something green and mineral — wet limestone, crushed leaves — came through the window even before I stopped.

The village itself is small and sure of itself in that way specific to places that have been producing something exceptional for a very long time. There is a tower, some medieval streets, a few decent restaurants where the menu starts with crottin de Chavignol on a bed of dressed greens. Everything is arranged around the fact of the wine. The cave coopérative is busy, the single-domaine producers are busier, and the man selling cheese from the market stall will offer you a pairing demonstration without being asked because here that is simply good manners.

The wine itself divides along the three soil types in ways that become interesting once you’ve tasted them side by side. The caillottes — limestone pebbles — give wine that is bright and early-drinking, generous with citrus. The terres blanches — chalky clay — produce something more structured and longer-lived. The silex — gunflint — is where the smoke comes from, that struck-match quality that makes Sancerre’s greatest wines smell like a stormy afternoon. I spent a morning at a domaine on the silex slopes and the vigneron, a woman in her sixties whose family had farmed the same parcels for three generations, poured them in order and watched me figure it out. The lesson cost nothing. The bottles I bought cost rather more.

What most people do not expect is how beautiful the view is from the tower above the village. The Loire below is a thick silver line through the flat plain, the Berry hills rise to the east, and on a clear morning you can see forty kilometers in any direction. This is where the river turns from the Loire Valley proper to something broader and more agricultural, and standing up there with a glass of whatever you’ve bought, you understand why a grape that grew here — rather than twenty kilometers away — became the prototype for an entire style.

The crottin de Chavignol is made in the village of Chavignol, which is close enough that you can walk there along the vineyard paths in twenty minutes. The small, slightly mold-crusted rounds of goat cheese that arrive warm and softened on a salad in every restaurant in town are produced just down the road by goats that have been eating the same grass between the same limestone outcrops for generations. The pairing is not invented — it evolved because of geography. That is the whole story of Sancerre in miniature.

When to go: September through early October for the harvest — the caves are busy but welcome visitors, and the light on the vineyards in that month is extraordinary. June is beautiful too, quieter, with the vines in full green. Avoid August if you dislike queues at popular domaines; most serious producers require a reservation year-round.