Magic with no tricks

After our blind tasting on sauvignon blancs from all over the world, we all agreed that this grape became uninspiring and a commercial caricature with no depth, elegance or class. Only a handful winemakers can work with this grape and do magic (Cotat, Boulay etc..).
I was lucky enough to recently try one sauvignon blanc who gave me back some hope. When I drunk this bottle, I asked myself what is the trick behind to do such an amazing wine. Well, thing is there's no trick at all: no chemicals as the domain is organic, no sulfur at all (neither during fermentation and bottling), no additives. I told you: no tricks.
The wine is from Les Cailloux du Paradis and its winemaker Claude Courtois who has been working naturally for a very long time. He is located in Soings en Sologne, 150km east of Saumur.

This 2008 cuvée is called Quartz, a vin de France, made from old sauvignon blanc vines and most of them are franc de pied i.e. pre-phylloxera. The very obvious thing is that this does not taste like any other sauvignon blanc. The terroir and winemaker managed to sublime the grape here. This is ripe but has a tremendous acidity and showed pear and spices (the wine is vinified and raised in barrels) and finally the minerality takes over while it keeps evolving in your glass. Only 11.8% (!!!), this is a wine with no sulfur added, and needs time to blossom. Much, much better on day 2. The way the power, acidity and minerality are managed remind me of Francois Cotat.

Do yourself a favor, get out and grab a bottle and let the wine takes you away.