Nantais Wines
The windswept vineyards of the Nantais are the Loire valley’s largest and most prolific and are given over almost entirely to a single grape variety, the Melon de Bourgogne, also known as Muscadet. Many of the best wines emanate from the area southeast of Nantes where the Sèvre and Maine tributaries of the Loire intersect and are labelled according as ‘de Sèvre et Maine’. The other important epithet to look out for when searching for decent Muscadet is ‘Sur Lie’. This denotes that the wines have been kept on it lees (the spent yeast cells after fermentation) over winter, which imparts additional flavour and adds a faint spritz of carbon dioxide. The Chéreau family have supplied us with their sole product, which is both de Sèvre et Maine and Sur Lie, without interruption for over thirty years and it is always excellent.
White