Lemon-gold in color, the wine opens with orange blossom, dried hay and crabapple aromas that sail into lime peel. The creamy palate shines with ripe fruit and honey-drizzled toast smeared with orange marmalade. Pair with roasts, pork tenderloin and grilled eggplant.

The 2023 “Classic” from Domaine Marc Brédif is a fine bottle of young Vouvray Sec. The wine comes in at 12.5 percent octane in this vintage and offers up a bright, deep and complex bouquet of quince, lemon, chalky soil tones, incipient notes of lanolin, orange peel and a lovely topnote of white lilies. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and zesty, with a superb core of fruit, excellent soil signature, lovely focus and grip and a long, impeccably balanced and impressively complex finish. Domaine Marc Brédif is very much under the radar these days, but they are making stellar examples of both Vouvray and Chinon and represent stunning values! 2025-2050.

As I have written in the past, the Marc Brédif Chinon is one of the great bargains in the world of Loire Valley reds these days. The wine is made from vineyards planted on gravelly soils and raised solely in stainless steel tanks. The 2023 is the current vintage of the estate’s Chinon on the market and comes in at a cool and classic 12.5 percent octane this year. The wine offers up a deep and refined bouquet of cassis, black cherries, cigar ash, tree bark, gravelly soil tones and plenty of upper register smokiness. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied, complex and elegant in profile, with a fine core of fruit, lovely soil undertow and grip, fine-grained, buried tannins, lovely focus and a long, very nicely balanced finish. Good juice. 2030-2070+.