{"product_id":"2021-domaine-didier-dagueneau-xxi-vin-de-france-loire-valley-france","title":"2021 Domaine Didier Dagueneau, XXI, Vin de France, Loire Valley, France","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 2021 vintage was brutal. Frost devastated the crop, mildew followed, and the harvest came in roughly 60% short. Rather than bottle a diminished version of each single-parcel cuvée, Louis-Benjamin made a decision he has not made before or since: blend everything together — Pur Sang, Silex, Buisson Renard, and the rest — into a single wine and name it for the year that forced it. There is no Silex, no Pur Sang, no Buisson Renard from this vintage. There is only XXI.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wine reads as the cool, acid-driven side of the Loire returned to form: gooseberry, lemon grass, green apple, elderflower, fresh hay, and a tangy citrus pith run through a silky, mouthwatering palate held by chiseled acidity. A clean nettle lift on the finish, with extended lees aging filling out the mid-palate. A wine as singular as the year that produced it, built to evolve serenely for twenty years or more from vintage.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yes Society","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51809473331496,"sku":"AT21DAGUENEAUXXI750","price":170.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/1794\/6152\/files\/DomaineDidierDagueneau_XXI.jpg?v=1778694540","url":"https:\/\/yes-society.com\/products\/2021-domaine-didier-dagueneau-xxi-vin-de-france-loire-valley-france","provider":"Yes Society","version":"1.0","type":"link"}