The Loire Valley is home to idyllic French villages and beautiful grand chateaux. It is also home to some of France’s most overlooked wines! Stretching over 600 miles the Loire is home to a variety of microclimates meaning it can make a range of wine delicious wine.

We’ll start in the central Loire, just as the valley bends west toward the Atlantic. Here we’ll find two of the world’s most famous Sauv Blanc appellations, Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume. These sibling sauvs show of many similar characters; bright acidity, good minerality and lovely citrus notes, but each has its own twist. Sancerre, the typically more respected of the two, mixes in notes of stone fruit and something slightly softer, the Daniel Chotard Sancerre that we’ll have open definitely lives up to the expectations. Pouilly-Fume offers up famously flinty notes that many wine nerds like myself just love!

Once you decide which Sauv Blanc you prefer we’ll head down river to an area called Anjou. The white wines of this area are primarily made with Chenin Blanc, and we’ll be tasting one from Pascal Biotteau. The Chenins in this area make medium bodied wines with great floral and stone fruit notes. We thing they pair really well with bratwurst on the grill!

Finally we’ll end just a bit east of Anjou in the village of Chinon. Chinon makes red wine exclusively from Cabernet Franc. These wines tend to have good acidity and tanning and crunchy red fruit notes that mix in with bell pepper notes that make for spicy and interesting wines. We think this spice works particularly well with anything beef, these wines truly crave red meat!

We hope you can join us at our downtown store (150 N. Delaware) to try through these wines, or stop into your local Crown and snag a bottle yourself.