Anthony & David Girard, Sancerre “Les Monts Damnés”

Like most sommeliers I know, I keep my antenna tuned for certain annual wine releases. Some of them can get a little heated, like when the Cotat cousins of Sancerre, Pascal and François, release their respective bottlings from the “Les Monts Damnés” vineyard—it’s like throwing raw meat into a cage full of hungry lions. Lucky for us, the Cotats are not the only ones scaling the slopes of that “damned mountain”—brothers Anthony and David Girard farm some prized old vines on the site, and do the Cotats one better on the value front.When you acknowledge Les Monts Damnés for what it is—a bona fide Grand Cru—the price tag for Girard’s version is even more glaring. The vineyard, of course, is the stuff of legend: a parcel so steep you need to be a skilled rock climber to scale it, or employ the use of treuils (winches) to transport grapes down the slope, as the Girards do. The soils are the same dense Kimmeridgian limestone found in Chablis, and the resulting wines are Sauvignon Blanc at its