Luc Prieur is the eleventh generation of his family to make wines in the village of Verdigny in Sancerre. Luc works alongside his father Paul and his children—three generations in the vines at the same time. They have terroirs encompassing all the great soils and vineyards of Sancerre. In 2010, they acquired a pneumatic press for extremely gentle slow pressings of the grapes. They can completely isolate the grapes from oxygen during press, which makes the flavors and aromas so vivid. Luc creates wines of transparent terroir and vintage through careful, hands-on work in the vineyards and the cellars. Their vineyards are certified organic and harvest is done by hand. Fermentations are allowed to proceed as naturally as possible with all of the whites aging on their lees in neutral oak with no batonage. Their holdings encompass 13.5 hectares of sauvignon blanc over several south-facing, sloping parcels in the commune of Verdigny. Their soils are a mix of pure limestone, called Caillottes in the region, and a mix of limestone and clay called Terres-Blanches. The remainder of their fruit is on Silex soils which add the characteristic gun-flint note of Sancerre. These are wines that have all the aromatic wonder we love sauvignon blanc for connected to the energy and gun flint smokiness that takes good Sancerre to those dizzying highs. 

The Sancerre Rouge Les Pichons is from massale selected pinot noir vines planted in the 1950s on marly limestone in the vineyard Les Pichons. The grapes are carefully hand-selected and destemmed before a 2-week fermentation and maceration without added sulphur. The extraction is very light. The wine ages for 15 months in used barrels without fining or filtration. A small amount of sulphur is added at bottling. This pinot noir shows the way climactic changes have really upended the notions of what wines can be drunk from where. In the past, pinot noir was only worth buying from Sancerre in really warm vintages. Now, the pinot noirs have all the finesse and lithe wonder that people have classically looked toward Burgundy to find.