Domaine des Huards 'Romo' Cour-Cheverny 2020

Most people have never heard of Romorantin. And it makes total sense because this grape basically only exists in one tiny pocket of France's Loire Valley: the Cour-Cheverny appellation. The Gendrier family has been growing it and making wine from it for about 200 years. They still have vines in the ground that were planted in 1922, which is pretty impressive and beautiful.

The wine is as singular as the grape. It's this beautiful, wiry contradiction. Organic, biodynamic, hand-harvested and peacefully aged for eight months on fine lees, which makes it nicely nutty. It smells like honey and preserved lemons and tastes like biting into a crisp golden apple, but it’s cut through with this electric, stony acidity that makes the whole thing hum.

It's the kind of wine we go cuckoo crazy for. We would just drink it on its own because it's so exciting to find something truly, weirdly special. But if we had to pair it with something, we would go for a rich, lemony pasta, or a salty pissaladière (that's a puff pastry tart loaded with anchovies).