2024 Domaine Renaud Pouilly Fume Loire

Real Pouilly-Fumé from a real family on the right hill. Domaine Renaud & Fils farms 20 hectares on Saint-Andelain — the most prized slope in the appellation — and this is their classic cuvée: 100% Sauvignon Blanc, estate-grown, priced like a weeknight wine but built like a special-occasion one.

What you're paying for is the dirt. The vines sit on a patchwork of flint-clay, clay-limestone, and Portlandian limestone — the soils that give Pouilly-Fumé its famous "gunflint" smoke and its mineral spine. That's the difference between this and a generic supermarket Sauvignon Blanc: there's tension and stoniness here, not just citrus.

It's made simply and honestly. Six months in stainless steel on fine lees, no oak to get in the way — just texture and lift. The Renauds are HVE-certified for sustainable farming, run by Philippe and his sons Nicolas and Clément, who live by the family line: vines that struggle make the best wines. Drinks great now, holds for 3 to 5 years.