In 1982, Didier Dagueneau returned to Saint-Andelain and refused to join the family domaine, setting out instead to make, as he put it, “the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world.” A former professional racer of both dog-sleds and motorcycle sidecars, he became the most divisive and most decorated figure in the Pouilly-Fumé appellation before his untimely 2008 death in an ultralight plane crash. His son Louis-Benjamin, then 26, took the reins alongside his sister Charlotte, and the wines have only sharpened. The domaine farms roughly 12 hectares in Pouilly across silex and clay, a parcel of Monts Damnés in Sancerre, and three hectares in Jurançon at the foot of the Pyrénées. Yields are kept at 75% of neighboring estates and vinified parcel-by-parcel; fermentations rely on indigenous yeasts; aging happens in cigar-shaped barrels and demi-muids designed for lees contact without aromatic distortion. Since 2017, in protest of an appellation rejection, the wines have been bottled as Vin de France.

Buisson Renard is a 1.5-hectare parcel mid-slope on the cooler southwest flank of Saint-Andelain, where clay-flint soils give a richer, more tactile reading of the hill than the upper silex bench. The vineyard was originally called Buisson Menard; a wine writer's misprint rechristened it "fox bush," and Didier, delighted by the joke, kept the new name. Today the cuvée commands a price above Pur Sang, a measure of how seriously the domaine takes the site.

The 2018 is layered and complex with the heft of a warm vintage but none of its slackness. Yellow plum, white peach, fennel pollen, candied ginger, and crushed flint move through a palate that is broad and saline, the texture filled out by oak aging. The acidity tightens; the finish runs long on dried thyme and a faintly smoky mineral note. Approaching a stride that will hold for two decades or so beyond bottling.