François Pinon Vouvray "Silex Noir" 2018

Pinon's 'Silex Noir' bottling is named for the rare black flint soils of the Terné and Les Batailleries vineyards that produce the grapes for this bottling, and that flinty minerality carries through on the palate. A sec tendre, this gently off-dry cuvée eloquently displays why François Pinon is consistently considered a top producer of Vouvray, their wines representing an accumulation of centuries of generational knowledge.

The long and cold two to three month fermentation of this wine with native yeast and no chaptalization endows delicate aromas of lemon zest, greengage plum, and quince, nuances that would be lost with a hotter fermentation. The racy mineral core given by the chalk subsoils is balanced by a slight amount of residual sugar. This wine benefits from an hour or two of decanting so that its complex aromas can fully unfold.