Forget Sancerre. Reuilly is the Loire's Best Kept Secret.
Sometimes discovering a great wine is at the end of a long dirt road, with only GPS coordinates and an email in a foreign language to go on. And sometimes, that discovery happens after slogging through a thousand-plus wines in a crowded convention center. The wine that catches your attention might lead you to an unassuming table in the middle of an exhibition hall, where a peppy, affable man wants to tell you about his scrappy new winery — while pouring brilliantly expressive wine from unlabeled bottles.
Finding a diamond in the rough at a wine fair is never guaranteed, but when we find one, it's enough to make us drop everything and investigate.
That's how we met Pascal — in the middle of the organized chaos of Millésime Bio, Europe's largest organic wine fair. A long morning of tasting through hundreds of wines had turned up very few promising leads. But behind one of those promising samples was a sincere and passionate man, quietly working to revive the reputation of an appellation most people had forgotten entirely.
When I finally made the trip to visit Pascal’s on his home turf this past November, he was every bit as charming and upbeat as I remembered. On a gray, rain-soaked day, he walked me through the winery space he shares with a handful of other small producers, telling me the story of Reuilly — how it had come perilously close to losing its vineyards altogether, first during the phylloxera crisis, and later to obscurity, and how he is now part of a small, determined group replanting the appellation and restoring its good name.
Over a long lunch, he recounted his unlikely path to becoming a winemaker. What started as a simple idea — buy a vineyard near his home in Orléans — quickly snowballed into something much bigger: hands-on work in the vineyard, long days in the cellar, and hauling his unlabeled bottles to trade shows across France.
What began as a reverie has became a full-blown passion. And the vineyards he'd stumbled into? It turns out they are exceptional. Reuilly sits along the Cher, a tributary of the Loire, on soils rich in Kimmeridgian limestone — the same ancient seabed that gives the great whites of the Loire their tension, their minerality, and their longevity. If you've heard Reuilly described as "the poor man's Sancerre," know this: that's not really fair to Pascal's wines. They are priced accessibly — intentionally so — but there's nothing second-rate about what he's doing. His flagship Sauvignon is an exceptional value, and a wine you’ll want to have around for any occasion.
This is a textbook Loire Sauvignon Blanc, and I mean that as a high praise. Expressive from the moment you pour it — bright citrus, lime pith, gooseberry and grapefruit. Light-bodied and lively, with the kind of clean, refreshing finish that makes you reach for another glass before you realize you've finished the first.
It's an easy "yes" at any dinner table — to pair with fish, goat cheese, a simple roast chicken, or nothing at all - a perfect weeknight staple you'll look forward to.