Andrew Guard

2022 Vin de France Blanc 'Buisson Pouilleux', Clos de Tue-Boeuf

100% very old vines Sauvignon - from a 1.1 ha block, it is in some ways the Petit Buisson's older sibling and almost unlike any other Sauvignon Blanc that you can imagine. Once picked, the grapes are transferred to the winery, by refrigerated truck if necessary, and are fermented with absolute minimal intervention; the juice is pressed and decanted and transferred for fermentation into cask, where the wine remains on its lees until it is bottled straight from this vessel, without racking. Bright light lemon with floral lift and with intense stony minerality and brilliant notes of honeysuckle, verbena and hedgerow. This is a seriously good and very rare wine that will bring smiles all round and don't forget to put some away in the cellar !

Clos de Tue-Bœuf is run by two brothers, Jean-Marie and Thierry Puzelat, who tend their 10-hectare family estate in Les Montils (in the Cheverny AOC) and rent 6 hectares in a village nearby, in the Touraine AOC. The brothers were luck, their father had always worked Clos du Tue Boeuf with a very limited range of organic products and so the soils are alive; he also had never machine-harvested his vineyards or used industrial yeasts. The resultant wines are vibrant, translucent, and explosively flavourful and in many ways taste like they are home-made in that they have an honesty, truthfulness and wholesomeness in their flavours.