Domaine Merlin-Cherrier

From Vintage59:
Thierry Merlin was the first producer I started with, and he has been one of the most consistent. He works thirteen hectares of vines in Bué, one of the principal hamlets surrounding the old walled town of Sancerre. That town, once a Protestant stronghold, was sacked in the 16th century and again in the 17th during the Wars of Religion. It was a stronghold because Sancerre commands the highest hill above the Loire River, rising above a landscape of hills on the east side of the river (the appellation of Pouilly-Fumé across the river has little of Sancerre’s muscular hills and dales).