Domaine Philippe Tessier Cour-Cheverny (Romorantin) La Porte Doree 2023 extra-brut-selection whose family has spent nearly

whose family has spent nearly twenty years stewarding benchland sites at the foot of the Mayacamas first planted in the 1870s — the same stretch of Napa that made the region's reputation

lower in alcohol

Madonna del Piano is Valdicava's flagship Riserva — the estate's most ambitious bottling

savory character with far less ceremony

Domaine Philippe Tessier Cour-Cheverny (Romorantin) La Porte Doree 2023 extra-brut-selection whose family has spent nearlyRomorantin is grown in exactly one appellation on earth: Cour Cheverny, a sliver of the Loire barely fifty hectares in size. Legend has it Francois I had the vines brought up from Burgundy in the 1500s; five centuries later there is still almost none of it, and Tessier makes some of the best. La Porte Doree is the estate's flagship, from 80 to 90 year old vines on clay over limestone bedrock, fermented with native yeasts and left to rest on its lees