France · Loire · Upper Loire · Sancerre White · Still · wine-wine · 1141489
Lowest offer: 355.30 HKD (Buy)
Offers: 2 · Bids: 0
| Price / case | Vintage | Packing | Qty | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4263.60 HKD | 2022 | 12 x 75cl | 4 | hk / Hong Kong |
| 235.00 GBP | 2022 | 6 x 75cl | 8 | uk / United Kingdom |
No active bids.
| Vintage | Packing | Offers | Bids | Market price | WA rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 94 | |
| 2017 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 9220.92 | 93 |
| 2017 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 4610.46 | 93 |
| 2018 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 3813.24 | 94 |
| 2018 | 6 x 1.5L | 0 | 0 | 3813.24 | 94 |
| 2018 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 1906.62 | 94 |
| 2019 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 94 | |
| 2020 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 5116.08 | |
| 2020 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 | 2558.04 | |
| 2021 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2021 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2022 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2022 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 |
Rating: 92 –92
The 2019 Sancerre Les Romains is made in a supple, full style with a sense of lightness. It has the balance of a gymnast and a fine texture. The satisfying, mouthwatering, refined finish features delicate fragrances of chamomile and lemon.
Rating: 91 –91
Les Romains is a vineyard with its feet in flint to the east of the fault line in Sancerre. The 2020 Sancerre Les Romains begins with a fruity and open welcome, blossoming and silken in the mouth before tying the wine up; the flint influence acts like the belt on a pair of trousers tightening up the middle and leaving a sensation of sinew and length with a fine nettley fragrance.
Rating: 91 –91
The 2020 Les Romains is a pure, tranquil style of Sancerre. It has an appetizing, delicate nose of elderflower, chamomile and lemon tea. Relatively light in body, but flesh provides padding through the mid-palate. The acidity combines with the site's flinty soils to provide a structured, corset-like finish. A touch of alcohol warms the finish, slightly detracting from the overall impression. Nevertheless, an excellent wine.
Rating: 94 –94
From 20- to 50-year-old vines in a south/southwest-facing vineyard, the 2019 Sancerre Les Romains offers a pure yet intense and iodine-scented bouquet of shells and oysters along with algae aromas. Full-bodied, rich and powerful on the palate, this is an elegant, refined, balanced and refreshingly mineral Les Romains with a long, juicy, pretty aromatic, seriously structured and persistent salty finish with stimulating grip. Impressive, as always. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 94 –94
From a 50-year-old, south- and west-facing vineyard where Jurassic limestone meets Eocene silex, the 2018 Sancerre Les Romains opens with dried white fruit and iodine aromas on the intense and concentrated nose. Very elegant, salty and complex on the palate, this is a powerful and full-bodied yet finely structured and elegant Sancerre with a long and promising finish. The wine is clearly a 2018 representative but has a long life ahead. Impressive though more warm rather than cool. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 93 –93
The 2017 Sancerre Les Romains delivers a potpourri of herbal notes to the nose and indicates a deep and coolish terroir with silex-clay soils that give this wine distinctive purity and coolish flintiness but also ripe fruit intensity that is reminiscent of yellow rather than white or greenish fruits. The palate is clear, crisp and greenish, with notes of gooseberry and grapefruit as well as lime and black cassis. The wine is lean and finessed but intense and almost rich and develops a sustainable, stimulatingly salty, grippy and aromatic finish with passion fruit and green gooseberry aromas. An excellent, mouth-filling Les Romains with stimulating salinity. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 94 –94
Intense in color and tropical fruit aromas, with beautifully fine, flinty notes and purity with an almost hedonistic background, the 2016 Sancerre Les Romains opens with a deep, concentrated and substantial nose. Full-bodied, lush and elegant on the silky-textured palate, with lingering salinity and mineral grip, this is a wide, rich yet refined and structured Sancerre of great class, length and well-dosed power. It is beautifuly citric on the aftertaste. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 93 –93
The yellow-golden colored 2015 Sancerre Les Romains is deep, pure, rich and flinty on the fine and refreshingly mineral nose. Rich, dense and intense on the palate, this is a mighty yet elegant, refined and salty Sancerre with a full body, wide extension and long, powerful yet also salty finish. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 90 –91
From a predominantly flint soils, and tasted assembled from tank, the Vacheron 2009 Sancerre Les Romains smells of hedge flowers, elder flower, black currant, melons, and nut oils; comes to the palate silken smooth and enveloping, with savory saline meat stock as well as alkaline and chalky underpinnings; and finishes with luscious, juicy satisfaction, notwithstanding a slight hint of heat. Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron’s sophisticated winery and ambitious plans (including commencing a program for re-propagating selection massale vines, and biodynamic certification, achieved in 2008) are the source for a great many fascinating Sancerres, and it’s clear to anyone who tastes through their cellar today and hears them discuss their wines that the best is yet to come. One of the trends I find fruitful here is the move toward larger barrels – including some foudres – and less new wood. Despite the advantages – all things considered – of 2008 over 2009 in Sancerre, the infant 2009s here display in some instances more finesse than their 2008 counterparts thanks in significant measure, I perceive, to refinements in elevage. The previous generations at Vacheron were appellation leaders in promoting Pinot Noir (a grape that has in fact been planted around Sancerre since before the phylloxera; and before Sauvignon) in top-notch rather than expendable sites, so that Pinot now makes up just over 25% of the domaine’s acreage. The younger Vacherons have eagerly followed that lead, although I must say I find their style of vinification in some recent vintages over-eager, with a degree of extraction and woodiness that the fruit seems inherently challenged to handle and the mineral character associated with Sancerre too austere to compliment. Whether American consumers will consider good enough value reds whose European reputation already assures them a high rate of return must simply sort itself out in the marketplace. Most of the Vacheron wines, incidentally – especially their reds – are released very late by local standards. A Jon-David Headrick Selection (various importers), Asheville, NC; tel. (828) 252 8245; also, a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93
Rating: 90 –90
Reflecting a selection from 40 year old vines in their large share of this celebrated site, Vacheron’s 2010 Sancerre Les Romains initially proved reduced and reticent when I confronted it in April, and alkaline, wet stone notes lent an aura of austerity both in the nose and on the palpably firm, dense, though expansive palate. Apple, lemon, and kumquat emerge with airing as the dominant fruits, with piquancy of pip and rind allied to nut oils and stone in the persistent finish. It’s hard not to be impressed here even if one is far from being charmed or seduced. Perhaps time (possibly even short-term) will bring enhanced juiciness. Barring that, I suspect this will be best drunk over the next 4-6 years rather than having the aging potential of the best wines of its collection. (Incidentally, elevage here, too, was primarily in wooden upright.) I wrote extensively in Issue 190 about recent developments at their domaine, and this year the dynamic duo of young cousins Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron filled my ear and my tasting glass with so many tales of new plantings, projects, and bottlings; insights into terroir and technique; and well-considered evolutions in approach, that I can only manage to touch on a few of these in the introductory lines and tasting notes which follow. Suffice it to say for keeping in view the big picture, that the nexus of human talent and vinous quality that is Domaine Vacheron keeps increasing in brightness and intensity (although one can’t help noting that the prices keep pace), while approaches in the vineyards become increasingly meticulous and labor-intensive, and those in the cellar emphasize – always in an experimental spirit – gentler fermentative extraction for Pinot and larger-sized, increasingly neutral barrels for both reds and whites. In particular, the use of upright wooden fermentors for aging Sauvignon as well – an approach only begun (as I described in issue 190) with certain wines of the 2009 vintage – has been greatly extended. Filtration has been virtually eliminated – entirely so for vintage 2010 – a development made possible, say the Vacherons, by the greater insights and watchfulness they now bring to bear on white wine elevage, which in any event has long been unusually leisurely at this address. Predictably placing great emphasis on what they take to be the fruits of prolonged biodynamic cultivation, the Vacherons point out that the grapes they began harvesting on September 24, 2010 were ripe and their acidity majority tartaric, observations that are certainly corroborated in the glass. Their claim to have largely avoided and otherwise sorted out any less than perfect fruit in 2011 – when they began harvesting three full weeks earlier than in 2010 – is similarly backed up by the gustatory evidence. The past two years have, as Jean-Laurent Vacheron notes, been characterized by “harvesting the Sauvignons a bit earlier, for freshness, and risking leaving the Pinots to ripen further and be picked last. With Pinot,” he adds, “we don’t pick apart any bunches on the sorting table; if there’s any rot the whole bunch gets eliminated,” a rigor that – when combined with later, riper picking – dovetails with their enhanced retention of whole berries and with gentler extraction, approaches that have taken to a new level of refinement (and, I suspect, of harmonious aging potential) what were already widely considered the best of their appellation – and if you don’t believe me, just compare the Vacherons’ 2010 reds with those of almost any other grower’s from that challenging Pinot vintage! (My notes on the nature of individual sites as well as on elevage were generally taken in connection with tasting the 2010s, so look for them incorporated into the applicable 2010 vintage tasting notes.) A Jon-David Headrick Selection (various importers), Asheville, NC; tel. (828) 252 8245; also, a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93
Rating: 90 –90
From a single, 60 year old flint-rich (silex) vineyard and raised in large barrels, the Vacheron’s prestige bottling of 2005 Sancerre Les Romains smells enticingly of peach, purple plum, red currant, papaya and flowers. Waxy in texture, with lees-induced richness and complexity, and with lemon oil and subtle lanolin notes impinging on its rich fruit matrix, this finishes with subtle sweetness and delightfully-lingering peach, papaya, coriander, caraway and citrus zest. The oak component goes largely unnoticed, save for its more subtle influences via the lees and oxidation. Would that more wooded Sancerres were this successful. The Vacherons are particularly proud of their Pinot Noir, for which they also receive excellent press. I must say these reds are impressively dense, but for me somewhat lacking in generosity of fruit or tenderness. A Jon-David Headrick Selection (various importers), Carborro, NC; tel. (919) 932-3450. Also, a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93
Rating: 93 –93
A bright, delicious and refined Sancerre with notes of sliced apples, fresh herbs and stones. Medium-bodied with bright acidity and character. Precise with volume and poise. Well rounded, crunchy and flavorful, with excellent length. From organically grown grapes. Drink or hold.
Rating: 96 –96
This is focused on minerality, with aromas of lemon paste, lemon leaves, flint, oyster shells and a floral character like broom flowers. Medium-bodied with a silky texture, subtle elegance and crisp, slightly leafy acidity. Vibrant finish. It still shows quite assertively green notes. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drinkable now, but best in two to three years.