Domaine des Quatre Piliers Ancrage 2024

Valentin Desloges trained under Coche-Dury and Thierry Pillot before coming home to Touraine to farm 25 tiny plots like kitchen gardens — this is one of his most polished Sauvignon Blancs yet.

Grape varietal & region: 100% Sauvignon Blanc from Domaine des Quatre Piliers in Noyers-sur-Cher, Touraine, in the Loire Valley. The domaine's 10 hectares are broken into 25 separate plots, each farmed almost individually — "worked like small gardens," as the estate puts it — and the whole property has been converted to organic farming. Ancrage is built from old vines, hand-harvested, sourced from parcels chosen for age and character rather than convenience. Touraine sits at the eastern, more continental end of the Loire's Sauvignon Blanc belt, giving wines with a bit more weight and ripeness than the flinty examples further downstream in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé — helped along here by full barrel fermentation, a technique borrowed more from Burgundy than the Loire's usual stainless-steel-and-speed approach.

Taste profile: fresh and precise rather than blowsy — lime zest, sea salt and chervil on the nose, the herbaceous lift Sauvignon Blanc is known for, but reined in and focused rather than shouty. The palate carries a firm mineral spine through to a long, saline finish, with barely any of the varietal heaviness Sauvignon can lean into when overripe. Barrel fermentation (20% new Burgundy oak) adds texture and roundness without masking the fruit. Good with oysters, or anything that wants a wine to cut through rather than sit back.

Winemaking process: hand-harvested at full ripeness, then fermented and aged entirely in Burgundy oak barrels, 20% of them new. Meticulous élevage is the point — depth and texture without losing the sauvignon's natural lift. Estate-wide, the vineyards are organically farmed; no filtration details are published specifically for this cuvée, so treat the finishing process as the estate's default low-intervention approach rather than a confirmed spec for Ancrage itself.

Winemaker: Valentin Desloges is the son of a Touraine winegrower, so he grew up around this land before he ever left it — but he didn't stay put. He trained at Coche-Dury in Meursault and under Thierry Pillot in Chassagne-Montrachet, two of Burgundy's most exacting addresses, before bringing that precision home to build Domaine des Quatre Piliers in Noyers-sur-Cher. It shows: Ancrage ferments and ages in Burgundy barrels rather than the stainless steel most Touraine Sauvignon sees, a direct import of techniques picked up on the Côte d'Or, applied to Loire fruit.