Product Description:

"Domaine Vacheron is one of Sancerre’s elite properties, producing Sancerre of amazing purity and definition. L'Enclos is Vacheron’s most sought after wine. It hails from a single walled parcel within the Les Romains vineyard of ungrafted vines. Fermented with wild yeast, basket pressed and no malolactic. Aged in five year old barrique for one year. ‘L’Enclos’ is special in that it is planted exclusively to ungrafted rootstock (franc de pied) from a massal selection by the winemakers’ grandfather. Pure flint (silex) soils give the wine smoky lift and definition.

The domaine has been completely transformed over to biodynamic farming with two young cousins, Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron, at the helm. No synthetic material is used in the vineyard, harvests are carried out exclusively by hand, and the only fertilizer used is produced from the compost pile. Yields are kept extremely low. Having inherited some of the most coveted parcels in the appellation, the cousins are trying a Burgundian approach to Sancerre winemaking, with parcels being vinified separately and blends varying from year to year. At the domaine, Pinot Noir is not an afterthought, but a focus, and on soils just a couple of hours west of Burgundy, they are making grand, expressive bottlings from the varietal. While the attention to detail, the natural farming and focused winemaking are important, it is the soil structure that really shines through in these wines. While much of Sancerre lies on chalk soils, much of the Vacheron estate is planted on silex, which is flint over a clay and limestone base. This silex soil contains millions of tiny oceanic fossils, giving evidence that the entire region was once covered by the ocean. It produces wines of amazing minerality and acidity, with trademark smoky aromas. The famed “Les Romains” and “Belle Dame” vineyards in Sancerre are made up exclusively of this soil type and the Vacheron family owns some of the more important holdings in these parcels. As Jean-Dominique was recently quoted in the Revue de Vin de France, “We have not yet seen the sum of what one can do with Sauvignon in Sancerre.” We can’t wait to see what’s coming next." -Importer

"I wrote extensively in Issue 190 about recent developments at their domaine, and this year the dynamic duo of young cousins Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron filled my ear and my tasting glass with so many tales of new plantings, projects, and bottlings; insights into terroir and technique; and well-considered evolutions in approach, that I can only manage to touch on a few of these in the introductory lines and tasting notes which follow. Suffice it to say for keeping in view the big picture, that the nexus of human talent and vinous quality that is Domaine Vacheron keeps increasing in brightness and intensity (although one can’t help noting that the prices keep pace), while approaches in the vineyards become increasingly meticulous and labor-intensive, and those in the cellar emphasize – always in an experimental spirit – gentler fermentative extraction for Pinot and larger-sized, increasingly neutral barrels for both reds and whites. In particular, the use of upright wooden fermentors for aging Sauvignon as well – an approach only begun (as I described in issue 190) with certain wines of the 2009 vintage – has been greatly extended. Filtration has been virtually eliminated – entirely so for vintage 2010 – a development made possible, say the Vacherons, by the greater insights and watchfulness they now bring to bear on white wine elevage, which in any event has long been unusually leisurely at this address." -David Schildknecht, Wine Advocate