Description
Domaine des Brangers, Menetou-Salon
I tend to avoid wine “hacks” of any kind because broad generalizations can get you in trouble. But I feel pretty comfortable saying this: If you love Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc, and you see a bottle bearing the “Menetou-Salon” AOC designation, grab it. There aren’t that many of them out there, because most wine buyers (and consumers) tend to pick Loire Valley Sauvignon Blancs with more name recognition, like Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé. So, if a retailer or restaurant sommelier is going to swim against the current, so to speak, and list something from Menetou-Salon, it needs to be special.
It should be enough that Menetou-Salon is right next door to Sancerre, and that its wines are reliably less expensive because of that name-recognition gap, but it’s not: Sancerre is such a powerful “brand” it tends to suck all the oxygen out of the room. So, despite my hesitations about hacks, I have to say Menetou-Salon is a pretty great one if classic Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc is one of your go-to whites. Chances are the person who chose it had the same kind of experience we had with today’s scintillating 2019 from Domaine des Brangers: The wine is not merely an “alternative” to Sancerre but a genuine equal, and at a competitive price to boot.
Look out across Menetou-Salon and, unlike in Sancerre, you won’t see an endless wave of grapevines. Vineyard locations here are carefully chosen, and accord neatly to the distribution of the Kimmeridgian limestone running underfoot. This may just be the most famous bunch of rocks in the wine world: a single band of fossilized marine life that imbues not only Menetou and Sancerre, but also Chablis and Champagne, with the mouthwatering zip and tension wine lovers crave. Whereas in many appellations it’s hard to know which growers have vines in the touted bedrock and which are just cashing in on a reputation, in Menetou-Salon it’s cut and dry: vineyards are planted on Kimmeridgian limestone and that’s that.
Domaine des Brangers is owned by the Chavets, a family with deep roots in Menetou-Salon, and fierce advocates for the appellation. The family estate of 23ha is in the hamlet of Brangers, hardly a kilometer outside of the village of Menetou-Salon, and Chavets have grown grapes here since the 17th century. As a demonstration of their commitment to quality, the Chavet family was the first in Menetou to practice green harvesting, in which unripe grape clusters are removed to increase concentration and ripeness. This sacrifice of quantity for quality is standard practice at quality-minded estates now that they can rely on a global export market, but was considered downright insane when the Chavets first introduced it.
The 2019 Domaine du Gaec des Brangers Menetou-Salon is a masterclass in Sauvignon brilliance. Fermented and aged in stainless steel, its limestone origins shine through with crystalline purity. In the glass, it’s a pale straw color with flecks of green, with the incomparable aromas of classic Sauvignon Blanc: passionfruit, white grapefruit, oyster shells, sweet herbs, and wet stones. The palate is medium-bodied with great density to the fruit and a deep, steely mineral core, all of it elevated by a wash of juicy acidity. This is everything there is to love about Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc. There’s no doubt this is delicious now, but I don’t doubt it will offer plenty of pleasure over the next three to five years. It’s hard to beat a value like this, and the versatility this bottle offers is incredible: sip it on its own as an apéritif, with cucumber or tomato-filled summer salads, and any fish preparation you can think of. Serve it at 45 degrees in all-purpose white stems, and there’s not much this wouldn’t be delicious with. Such is the joy of Menetou-Salon!
