The first thing I thought of when I tasted this wine was what a great sushi wine it would make. Then I started thinking about oysters with a bright, acidic mignonette. Then it was on to Spring vegetables like peas and asparagus. Then some goat’s milk chèvre. Whenever I try a new vintage of Jean-Max Roger’s Pouilly-Fumé “Cuvée Les Alouettes,” I immediately start scheming over what’s for dinner.
It’s impossible not to when you’ve got a wine that combines invigorating, downright crunchy minerality with such an exotic aromatic profile. Classic, soil-driven Loire Sauvignon Blanc like this just makes me want to eat—which, I think, is one of the highest compliments you can pay any wine. “Les Alouettes” is a wine we look out for each year, not least for the serious value it offers, and 2015 blessed Roger with an especially layered and complex expression. Stylistically, it’s so versatile and seasonally appropriate—it’s like bottled sunlight, something you’ll want to have on hand for a variety of occasions in the months to come.

When you factor in the warm, dry 2015 vintage (experienced across most of Europe), you get a quite intense, textured, seductive Loire Sauvignon. In the glass this wine comes at you with gunflint blazing, along with a heady mix of citrus, passionfruit, white peach, honeysuckle, chives, green herbs such as tarragon and mint, and a Chablisienne hint of oyster shell. The palate is pretty voluptuous (by Loire Sauvignon Blanc standards, anyway), delivering ripe tropical fruit notes and a whiff of smoke on the long finish. As is so often the case with well-structured French whites, this wine starts out grapefruity and tart at the first sip but broadens considerably after contact with air—decant it about 30 minutes before serving in all-purpose white wine glasses (the larger the better, to aid swirling and sniffing), and allow the temperature to come up to 50 degrees or so. The aromatic expression is off the charts when you treat it this way, and, as I noted above, the food applications are myriad: I’ve got some chilled oysters on my mind now, so I’ve attached a series of mignonette recipes. With this wine, the acid-on-acid pairing is like touching two live wires together! For me, that’s always worth having on the menu. Cheers!