This should be lovely for early enjoyment on release. Issuing from a warm, flint-rich soil, the Vacherons’ 2009 Sancerre Belle Dame – tasted from barrel – smells of ripe, nutmeg-tinged cherry; comes to the palate polished and sweetly-fruited; but finishes with a bit of extraneous resin and vanilla from barrel that strikes me as being at odds with its underlying sense of chalkiness. It’s early days for this, of course, but I have to wonder: will more wood exposure really be what this wine wants? It’s slated to be racked into tank around the end of the year. (The barrels are once used, but of a brand that in my experience notoriously strongly marks the young wine.) “We were going for extraction in Pinot,” says Jean-Dominique, “but now we’re looking for elegance.” It’s a line – and, to be sure, an admirable aspiration – one hears time and again now, but I think the Vacheron cousins have a little more work to do before they can really walk that talk. I suspect this should best be enjoyed within a couple of years of its imminent release. 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

The Vacheron 2008 Sancerre Belle Dame is much more resinous, vanillin, and crudely oak-scented than the other examples I tasted, which may have to do not only with the presence of some new wood but with the high malic acidity and late malo-lactic transformation familiar from this vintage in Burgundy as well, which may have encouraged extraction of oak flavors. Late malo may also in part explain why the wine was still in tank when I tasted it in June, but I don’t sense that it was going to benefit from further postponement of bottling. Notes of black tea, dried cherries, and leather also emerge here, carrying onto a palate that’s tart, bright, and seems palpably chalk-lined, but whose somewhat aggressive sense of acidity (call it the “memory of malic”) doesn’t – and I doubt is likely to –harmonize with the flavors from barrel nor with fruit that seems much more mature. I would plan on drinking this young. 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

The Vacherons’ 2006 Sancerre Belle Dame represents the current release of their barrel-enhanced prestige cuvee. Scents of red raspberry, rhubarb, white pepper, and lanolin and resin from oak lead into a firm but sappy palate, whose strongly resinous and overtly woody notes manifestly carry into the finish, leaving my gums slightly numb and dry. Of this wine’s fruit concentration and structural rectitude there can be little doubt, but I would hesitate to consign it to the cellar lest its drying tendency become more pronounced.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