2022 Edmund Et Anne Vatan 'Clos La Neore' Sancerre MAGNUM

The 2022 Clos La Néore in magnum, from the legendary Edmond Vatan estate, is a masterpiece of precision and restraint. From the famed Monts Damnés vineyard in Chavignol, this 100% Sauvignon blanc grown on Kimmeridgian limestone expresses a brilliant mineral backbone. The nose is lifted with notes of citrus zest, white flowers, flint and a touch of sea breeze. On the palate, it’s linear, saline and razor-sharp, with vibrant acidity and great depth. The magnum format ensures a slow, graceful ageing curve. A rare, iconic wine of singular style.

Few wines from the Loire command the kind of reverence reserved for Vatan’s Clos la Néore. In little more than a decade, it has shifted from an insider’s secret to one of the most coveted white wines anywhere. Its site — a monopole on the steepest face of Les Monts Damnés in Chavignol — combines terres blanches soils, an ideal southerly aspect, and vines replanted by Edmond Vatan in the 1960s, now nearing full maturity.

The farming remains resolutely low-yielding and traditional, ensuring fruit of extraordinary concentration. In the cellar, Anne Vatan preserves her father’s uncompromising methods: late harvesting, wild-yeast fermentations in neutral foudres, minimal sulfur, no filtration. The wine is released only after racking and gentle élevage in century-old oak, a process that privileges transparency and precision over control.

The result is a Sancerre that ages more like great Chablis, building layers of complexity over decades. Its scarcity — roughly 4,000 bottles annually — combined with its singular personality, has elevated Clos la Néore into the pantheon of the world’s most collectible whites.