Flores Sancerre by Domaine Vincent Pinard 2018

The Pinards have been passing down winemaking techniques for, quite literally, generations – 20 to be precise. The current domain - founded in 1996 by Vincent Pinard - is now run by his children, Florent and Clément. They are laser focused on creating wines with a sense of place, specializing in site-specific terroir with the goal of always creating the most precise, pure and fine wines possible.

The estate is 17ha in size and is located around the prestigious town of Bué, one of the three ‘cru’ villages of Sancerre, known for its Kimmeridgean terres blanches soils. Their holdings are among the best in the region and include land in the famed Clos du Chêne Marchand, La Pelerine, Plantes de Prie and others. Their pinot noir is grown on clay-limestone soil with a limestone subsoil. Florent and Clément do everything as naturally as possible; intervene as little as feasible, limit yields, harvest by hand, hand select the grapes on the sorting table and operate without the intervention of herbicides, insecticides or any anti-rot treatments. In other words, they farm organically and biodynamically but choose not to be certified since this is exactly how their ancestors farmed.

They produce 12 wines from 40 different vineyard parcels; 8 of them white, 3 reds and a rosé for good measure. The ‘main’ wine, Florès, has a production of just 35,000 bottles annually with all the others being a fraction of this. Depending on the cuvée, they work with tanks, wooden vats or 228L and 600L new and used barrels. Their single vineyard Chêne Marchand, for instance, is aged in 4 barrels (2 of them new) as well as stainless steel tanks. The Pinards are creating wines that have weight and depth, a far cry from straightforward Sancerre that so many others produce.