2020 Les Quatre Piliers Grande Cuvée Sauvignon Blanc Bel Air, Loire Valley

Valentin Desloges’ flagship white comes from the Bel Air terroir, a south-facing site on the left bank of the Cher River and home to the domaine’s oldest Sauvignon Blanc vines (some 60 years). It’s not simply the older, lower-yielding vines that contribute to this cuvée’s ravishing intensity. The soils are dominated by red clay, just below a layer of flinty sands, which further adds to the wine’s spicy generosity and textural breadth. The winemaking is not so different from the Chapitre I. However, this wine ferments in barrel and matures (for 18 months instead of 12) in ex-Coche-Dury barrels with 20% new oak from the domaine’s tailor-made barrels. The resulting wine is intense but nuanced, a superstar Sauvignon built on texture, crystalline fruit and smoky, rock-licking minerality. In the length, power, and wrought texture, there’s more than a hint of Pur Sang going on. In the words of French critics Bettane and Desseauve: “It’s a masterstroke.”