Domaine de Belliviere (Eric Nicolas) Jasnieres Coteaux du Loire Blanc Premices 2023 NO20230712 drawing on a rotating cast

drawing on a rotating cast of edge-of-the-continent vineyards in Sonoma

with notes of butterscotch

savory streak rather than a sweet-fruited one

drawn from old vines

with the kind of resolved complexity you can't fake

Domaine de Belliviere (Eric Nicolas) Jasnieres Coteaux du Loire Blanc Premices 2023 NO20230712 drawing on a rotating castThe inviting way into one of France's most obscure great Chenin addresses. Prmices is a selection of the most open, forward barrels from Bellivire's younger vines orchard fruit, white flowers and a brisk mineral snap where the domaine's senior cuves ask for patience. The vines sit on flinty clay over tuffeau limestone in the Loir valley north of Tours, a cold, marginal corner of France where a catastrophic 1956 frost nearly ended winegrowing for good,