2024 Henri Bourgeois La Cote des Monts Damnes Sancerre

Henri Bourgeois is the first name most people think of for Sancerre. The family has grown grapes in Chavignol for ten generations. They started with two hectares and now farm about 70 (64 in Sancerre, 6 in Pouilly-Fumé), split into 124 plots on marl, flint and limestone-clay. Each plot is made separately in their five-level gravity-flow winery in Chavignol.

The family also runs Clos Henri, a 45-hectare estate in Marlborough, New Zealand. The paragraph then comes back home to the Monts Damnés, where they own more of the hill than any other grower. Jean-Marie Bourgeois and the next generation run the domaine today.

La Cote des Monts Damnes is the most famous hillside in Sancerre: a south and southwest-facing slope above the village of Chavignol so steep that the vines have to be worked by hand. The name means the damned hills, a nod to how punishing it is to farm. Underneath is Kimmeridgian marl, the same fossil-packed limestone and clay found in Chablis, and it is what gives great Sancerre its chalky, stony backbone.

Only about a dozen growers own vines on the hill, and Henri Bourgeois holds more of it than anyone, with prime rows across the top of the slope. The family is now in its tenth generation in Chavignol, led by Jean-Marie and Rémi Bourgeois, and this single-vineyard bottling is the one that shows what their best site can do.

Only the ripest grapes are picked by hand and pressed gently. The juice settles naturally for a couple of days, ferments in temperature-controlled stainless steel, then rests on its fine lees for 9 to 10 months before bottling. That lees time adds texture and depth with no oak in the way, so you get the cut and energy you want from Sancerre plus the weight and length to drink now or hold for years.