Domaine Etienne Daulny

Only after Didier made the rounds shaking hands—taking polite care not to neglect ours—did our date arrive. But not in the Porsche for which he was renowned, and in no shape to shake hands either, for his right arm was in a sling. It turned out that he’d broken the latter while crashing the former. Or as he put it to us, with a sly smile and a carefree shrug: “I had a little accident.” But that wasn’t going to slow him down. “Allons-y!” he exclaimed, and we bundled into a Renault 5 whose gas pedal he soon pinned to the floor as we flew into the hills west of town.

Did we think we were going to die as we bombed around the backroads of Bué and Chavignol, Alphonse’s left hand darting between the stick shift and the steering wheel? Yes, we did. Was everybody in this town hellbent on hurtling into some revolutionary future at 165km per hour? As the vines blurred outside the passenger window, it sure seemed like it. Yet first impressions can be tricky, because among all the outsized personalities we encountered that afternoon, one memory destined to stand out was our introduction to Etienne Daulny.

It wasn’t really because of the man himself. Etienne was good-humored and obviously well-liked, but so understated and unassuming as to almost resist physical description. Yet his family’s domaine, comprising plots that stretch across Chavignol and Verdigny, was another story.

The road to Daulny’s place ran alongside a vineyard called Clos de Chaudenay: a hill covered in shattered limestone prickled with old-vine Sauvignon Blanc. There was something uncanny about this terroir. If you kept your head down while walking the steepest slopes, you could easily mistake it for Grand Cru Chablis—and you’d be at least partially right, because rocky Kimmeridgian limestone “Terres Blanches” turn out to be a signature of Verdigny. And the clay component here, warmed by a southwest exposure, made for a generous, dense, yet incredibly mineral cuvée whose true character would only become fully clear to us over the ensuing decades—because every time we’ve come back to taste vintages 10, 20, and even 30 years old, the wines are as vivid and fresh as if time had stood still, with even their floral delicacy intact. 

It was no wonder Alphonse had carved out time to slow down for a visit here; Daulny was making the kind of wine that inspired Loire traditionalists and visionaries alike.

Etienne was working with his brother Bertrand at the time, and now he runs the estate with his daughter Celine, but the main story at Domaine Daulny is what hasn’t changed. He sources his regular Sancerre bottling from more than 20 exquisite sites, from the steep “Les Monts Damnés” in Chavignol to 70-year-old vines in Verdigny’s “Les Bois Butteaux.” He vinifies it in stainless steel, blocking malolactic to preserve the fresh apple-and-pear nerve of this finely cut wine. The special Clos de Chaudenay cuvée sees mostly stainless steel as well, with about a fifth of the production in 600-liter Demi-Muid oak barrels, which befits a wine that naturally has more breadth, backbone, and serious aging potential.

Back when we first met him, Etienne Daulny was working vines that only the savviest American wine drinkers recognized as being something more than just Sauvignon Blanc. Since then, Sancerre has transcended its varietal to become an appellation that any New York sommelier can list at $20/glass confident that the bottles will run dry. The chalky minerality, snappy verve, and graceful cut that keep people coming back are what Daulny has been about since the late 1980s. He makes classic wines that live a long time—even if hardly anyone ever lets them. But who can blame them? When a Sancerre winemaker with envied plots has achieved excellence so consistently for so long, sometimes the best moment is the one you don’t have to wait for.