Chateau de Bonnezeaux La Montagne 2020

Bonnezeaux is one of the Loire's storied sweet-wine appellations, which is why this bone-dry Chenin Blanc must call itself Vin de France. Château de Bonnezeaux traces to the early nineteenth century, but its vines sat abandoned from the 1980s until 2012, when Guyonne Saclier de la Bâtie, trained under Mark Angeli at La Ferme de la Sansonnière, took the helm of her family's estate, restored the vineyards with biodynamic farming, and set out to make dry wine from the appellation's great slopes. La Montagne is one of Bonnezeaux's three south-southwest-facing hills, its soils dense with broken schist, and the fruit comes from two parcels planted roughly forty and seventy years ago. Fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged twelve months in French oak, it is bottled without fining, filtration, or added sulfur. Yellow apple, honey, and chamomile over a stony core, with driving acidity and a long finish. Dry Bonnezeaux in all but name.