Domaine Laporte, 2020 Update
Domaine Laporte is not the most famous name in Sancerre circles. And yet despite this whenever I taste here I find I am rarely disappointed. The domaine is of course well managed, it having been in the hands of the Jean-Marie Bourgeois (pictured below in the Laporte vines) and the rest of the Bourgeois family since René Laporte, who had no heir, handed it over to them back in the 1980s. The 30 hectares of vines are tended using exclusively organic methods, for which they are fully certified, by a team dedicated to the domaine and not to any other Bourgeois vineyards.
The fruit is picked swiftly, by machine (or at least it was when I last called in during harvest time, admittedly a few years ago now) and vinified in the cellars which are situated very close to the principal vineyards. The result is an intriguing portfolio of wines, the key feature in terms of style being the largely flint terroirs north of Saint-Satur from which the fruit originates, perhaps one of the least-comprehensively exploited of the common Sancerre terroirs. Having said that, the domaine also offers a cuvée from the Comtesse parcel on Les Monts Damnés, one of only two I know of (the other being that from Gérard Boulay). This is, perhaps, the limestone exception that proves the flinty rule.
Please log in to continue reading: