2011 Sancerre le Chene Marchand

Diverse green herbs, juniper and huckleberry scent and piquantly mark the palate of Merlin-Cherrier’s 2011 Sancerre Chene Marchand, its bitter elements well-integrated into a silken-textured palate where gooseberry and grapefruit serve for tart satisfaction and a more generous sense of juiciness than found in any of the lots that informed this year’s “regular” bottling. This finishes with good grip, decided piquancy and a relatively narrow range of flavors. I visited Thierry Merlin of Bue for the first time this April, encountering wines that reflected the challenges of the three most recent vintages, challenges no doubt accentuated by the fact that he relies almost entirely on machines at harvest, which began September 12 in 2011, and two weeks later in 2010. Not atypically for Sancerrois growers, Merlin’s grandfather was already exporting and today only around a third of the estate’s wine is consumed inside France. The oldest stands on Merlin’s 37 acres were planted in the 1950s, but even many of those have succumbed to esca, and he is steadily replacing losses with clonal material. Importer: Vintage 59, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 966-9812