Red Wines from Saumur Champigny, Irancy, and the Applegate Valley
Notes on the best wines from recent tasting
Welcome back to Notable, where twice a month I report on best wines from recent tasting. Although I have only a single Loire wine, the 2018 Saumur Champigny from Domaine des Sanzay, I didn’t hesitate to illustrate the whole post with photos from my April trip to the central Loire, in 2018, when the flowers were in bloom. I also have notes on the 2022 Benoît Cantin La Grande Côte Irancy and three Mourvèdre monovarietals from Troon Vineyard, all from 2024: Rosé, Amphora, and a new Mourvèdre raised in wood. Enjoy.
Domaine des Sanzay Beauregard Saumur Champigny 2018
13.5% ABV | $25; imported by Ansonia Wines
Seventh-generation winegrower Antoine Sanzay transformed his family’s company in 1999 when he stopped selling fruit to the cooperative and started bottling wine. Today the 11-hectare estate is certified organic, and winemaking is old-school, with ambient fermentations and aging in a mix of wooden foudres and barriques. This wine shows the true character of Loire Cabernet Franc: fragrant of green herbs and candied cherries, bright with juicy acidity but animated by rustic tannins. Its senses of sweet and tart and herbal and bitter conspire to create dark red refreshment. It’s not highly polished, not overconfident, just a drinkable, food-loving reminder of spring days in the Loire.
Benoît Cantin La Grande Côte Irancy 2022
13% ABV | $35; imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant
Irancy is a red-only appellation south-west of Chablis, near Auxerre, with soils that are likewise Kimmeridgian limestone. Pinot noir is the anchor grape, but the wines may contain up to 10 percent César, an ancient hyper-local variety first mentioned in literature in 1783 but farmed there for much longer.
Cantin’s La Grande Côte is a south-facing lieu-dit with 30- to 40-year-old vines; farming is sustainable. This wine is 100 percent Pinot, vinified with ambient cultures, which spent a year in 228L oak barrels, a portion new; according to the importer’s website, some of the oak comes from Cantin’s own land. It smells fresh-faced, breezy, with a sense of red fruit and washed linen on the line, but there’s also something darker and an herbal tint, maybe rosemary. It has a firm texture, with woodsy tannins and a finishing grip piqued by bright acidity, and flavors of cranberry and pomegranate.
I served it alongside sear-roasted pork tenderloin with a shallot and white wine reduction, and while we often enjoy Oregon Pinot, it was lovely to pour an affordable French version, with the earthy depths it delivers.
Three Mourvèdre wines from Troon Vineyard
Troon Mourvèdre Rosé 2024
11.7% ABV | $35 (sample)
Troon Vineyard’s Mourvèdre rosé uses fruit grown specifically for that purpose, in lieu of, say, creating a saignée rosé from a tank of fermenting red, or using off lots to make a pink afterthought. The fruit is picked early at high acidity, then whole-cluster pressed, settled, and fermented in neutral barrels. Fermentation and malolactic conversion were spontaneous, the latter finishing in spring once the weather warmed. It is bottled unfined and unfiltered, with a light sulfite addition. The result is onionskin color, an orange versus bluish cast. It smells salty, like wet clay, but mixed with red fruit and orange citrus. Piquant acidity lights up the wine, which also shows savory, gingery flavors touched with tart rhubarb. The cold chill of a fridge mutes this wine, and it feels more dimensional and responsive once it has warmed a bit.
Troon Amphora Mourvèdre Applegate Valley 2024
12% ABV | $55 (sample)
For this wine, various lots of fruit were vinified separately, some whole-cluster (with about 35 percent in the final blend). The wine aged in large terracotta amphorae for ten months. Its aromas are earthy and floral, with purple flowers and black and red fruits. In my notes I wrote “wilderness,” shorthand for a kind of woodland sweetness that also has a feral edge. Texturally it’s glittery from the acid, and the tannins are nearly non-existent. I got flavors of cranberry and cinnamon. This is a light colored wine with little extract and admirably low alcohol, which makes it easy to drink and to partner with a wide variety of foods.
Troon Mourvèdre Applegate Valley 2024
12% ABV | $45 (sample)
Troon has leaned into Mourvèdre as a varietal and in blends, but 2024 is their first wood-aged monovarietal offering. Lots were fermented separately, again with a small portion of whole clusters, and the wine aged in neutral French barriques. It’s darker than the amphora wine of the same vintage, but has the forthright fruit and lifted floral notes I associate with all of Troon’s red wines. The tannins are non-existent, expressing themselves as light dryness at the finish. But it has firm acid and highlights of aromatic spice. It’s not Mourvèdre from France or Spain, with its earthy extract and high alcohol and bite of blood and leather, but something altogether different, and, again, easy to like.
Images ©2026 Meg Maker
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