Domaine Laporte, 2015 Update
Where do you go to experience the interplay between flint and Sauvignon Blanc in Sancerre? Well, there are many domaines where flint plays a part in the portfolio, often a single cuvée alongside perhaps half a dozen from various combinations or types of limestone, from Oxfordian to Kimmeridgian, from caillottes to terres blanches. The flint cuvée often isn’t that hard to spot; if it isn’t called Silex (meaning flint) then it is not unusual to find the name is some play on that word, with Exils from François Crochet and X-elis from Gitton Père being particular favourites of mine.
Few domaines feature flint ahead of limestone, but one that does is Domaine Laporte. An important domaine owned and run by the Laporte family for 130 years, it was sold to the Bourgeois family (of Henri Bourgeois) in 1986, and for the past couple of decades it has been under the ultimate control of Jean-Marie Bourgeois. Although, as a sizeable domaine in its own right, it is too large to be run ‘on the side’ along with all the other Bourgeois commitments and although Jean-Marie has overarching responsibility there is a full and independent team running this vineyard and cellars. The work in the vineyards has been organic since 1990, an impressive track record.
The principle vineyard is Le Rochoy, a broad sweeping south- and east-facing slope to the north of Saint-Satur, one of the Sancerre communes, perhaps not as famous as Chavignol or Bué but Sancerre all the same. The slope is nestled between woodland to the west, at the top of the slope, and the railway line, road and the Loire itself to the east. And the terroir here is flint, flint and more flint, the vineyard rich in degraded stones of silex, the deeper bedrock pure flint, the vineyard being located just on the eastern side of the flinty fault line which runs roughly north-south through the appellation and which gives us all of those silex cuvées mentioned above. The top cuvées Le Grand Rochoy and Les Royaux come from this vineyard, in particular the south-facing section, where the fruit is hand-picked. From the east-facing parcel comes Le Rochoy, which is machine-picked (as evidenced above). Other cuvées come from further afield in the appellation and beyond, including Pouilly-Fumé, but even here flint still plays a part.
