Notes from North Berkeley Imports:

"Sancerre from François Cotat is simply some of the most singular Sauvignon Blanc in the world. Devotees can tell you that what happens in this modest cellar in Chavignol is one part winemaking, three parts magic. Atypical yet arresting in their complexity, Cotat Sancerre is wine that can and should be aged for decades.

The Cotat family has tended both Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir on the slopes of the fabled “Monts Damnés” in Chavignol since the end of World War II; it was only in the 1990s when the two Cotat brothers, Paul and Francis, handed over the family domaine to their sons, François and Pascal, respectively.

The family purchased their parcel in ‘Culs de Beaujeu’ just after the second world war, and it was winemaker Francois Cotat’s great-grandfather who planted it himself. Facing northwest, ‘Culs’ is a cooler site, delivering a Cotat Sancerre with all its characteristic depth and vibrancy with an added edge of cool white fruits and stony persistence."

The 2024 vintage is ;inear, chiseled, and highly chablisian. The cool nature of both the vineyard orientation and the 2024 macro-vintage strips away the plush fruit, steering the flavor profile back into an electric, white-earth spectrum. It emphasizes snappy lemon curd, tart white peach, sea-spray, and a sharp bone-dry laser beam of Kimmeridgian limestone minerality. A harrowing and grueling growing season defined by relentless rain and historic downy mildew pressure across Sancerre. Because Cotat farms with low-intervention principles, protecting the vines required constant manual endurance. The lack of summer sunlight slowed sugar accumulation, preserving incredibly high levels of natural tart malic acid. Yields were drastically lower than in 2023.