Alcohol: 13.5%
Grape(s): Sauvignon Blanc
Localization: Loire Valley, France
Tasting Notes: "Pur Sang" is French for "thoroughbred" and is a joke that reflects Dagueneau’s annoyance at repeated references to the fact (by journalists) that he uses a horse to till some of his vineyards. This wine is produced primarily from a vineyard north of Saint Andelain called La Folie. The soil here is deep clay with some limestone. The vineyard is gently sloped and has perfect south/southeast exposure. Some smaller parcels on the Saint Andelain Hill occasionally also make it into this Cuvée. Barrel fermented and aged. This is always a rich and powerful Cuvée, enormously textural and complex. It is a wine that can live and live
96 Points Vinous: What I love most about the Pur Sang is its focus and precision; the compact, light-bodied core carries masses of fragrance across the palate and beyond on the long finish. There’s clarity and freshness, with a thread of acidity and minerality pulling the wine through like a needle and thread. It is starting to show the very first hints of time in bottle, with a hint of almond alongside the ripe melon notes and nettle tea character. Impressive stuff from this three-hectare parcel in the village of Saint Laurent l’Abbaye, about 5km northeast of the Dagueneau domaine.
The Domain: Since the beginning, the wines at Dagueneau have always been raised in oak barrels. Through extensive experimentation, there is always a mix of sizes, shapes, and percentage of new and used barrels which are exploited to varying degree depending on vineyard and vintage. The Dagueneaus have worked closely with the world’s top coopers to create some uniquely-shaped, very low-toast barrels (e.g. “cigares” and small foudres) that offer nuanced benefits of lees contact and/or specific oxygen exchange, all tiny facets that add up to a finer product in the end. The current regimen calls for wines to be held in oak for their first year, and then they are transferred to tank and held “en masse” for 5-7 months before bottling. While the wines can be drunk on release, like all great bottles, they benefit from extended aging in the cellar, 5-10 years usually to reach their peak, and can easily hold for 15-20 years or more (many of Didier’s first vintages still drink beautifully to this day!).
Sadly, tragedy struck on September 17, 2008, and Didier was killed when his plane crashed near Cognac. The world mourned the loss of one of its visionary winemakers who was 52 upon his death.
Didier was survived by his son and daughter, Louis Benjamin and Charlotte. Both had grown up at the winery, and in recent years, Benjamin had worked alongside his father in the vineyards and cellar and had very much absorbed his perfectionist attitudes and practices. Nonetheless, there were enormous shoes to fill, and the wine world watched with quiet reserve to see whether there would be any questions about the succession of this great estate.
The wines at Domaine Didier Dagueneau deserve their rightful place among the great 'singular' wines of the world. Eric Asimov, in his obituary of the late Didier Dagueaneau in the The New York Times, summed it up well: 'Tasting a Dagueneau wine for the first time was a revelation. His Sauvignon Blancs had an unexpected purity and clarity to them. The flavors were intense but nuanced. It wasn’t the fruit that was piercing, as in so many Sauvignon Blancs, but the freshness and the focus. As powerful a personality as he was, his wines did not exalt the stature of the winemaker so much as the beauty of the terroir.'"
