Pascal Cotat, Sancerre, “Les Monts Damnés”

Serious Sauvignon Blanc can stand with the greatest white wines of the world. Does this really need to be said? I didn’t think so, but then again, there’s not as much tribute paid to the great whites of Sancerre as there is to contemporaries from Burgundy, or Germany.Sancerre’s broad ‘brand’ recognition and its reliable presence on wine lists of all types tends to overshadow its moments of true, cellar-worthy greatness, which are many—and are reliably delivered, vintage after vintage, by Pascal Cotat. This is Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc at its most finely etched and tightly allocated, and yet, as if to illustrate my point above, it continues to be priced almost exponentially lower than other world-class whites it easily bests. Grown in essentially the same limestone terroir that defines some of the best white Burgundies—and capable of aging just as long—Cotat’s Sancerre is arguably one of the most important white wine ‘collectibles’ one could hope to have in one’s cellar, at a fractio