Domaine Henri Pelle Menetou-Salon 2005

Menetou Salon is largely unheard of in this country. The region (the French winemaking laws are quite particular about how big the region is and who is allowed to produce wines depicting a given name) is very modest in size, and of what it produces, not much of it finds its way over here. Places like Waitrose stock a few examples, you get the odd one through Oddbins or Majestic, but outside of that you need to use specialists or mail-order folks like BBR to get hold of any sort of choice.

Henri Pelle is a biggish producer so you should be able to find it, and anything as old as 2005 you might now be lucky to find. I can't recall the age of the bottle I glugged, but whichever it was, it was pretty good. You'd characterize Menetou Salon as quite a subtle example of a Sauvignon. Not as floral as a Pouilly Fume, not as steely as a Sancerre, and probably not as fruity as your average Touraine. But dry, crisp, fresh, nice fruit notes (usually gooseberry we're told) and eminently drinkable on its own, chilled, or maybe with a spot of white fish - but nothing too big on flavour (so avoid the fish curry or the chillied dishes, just a bit of pan friend halibut- yum!).

On a personal note, if you like M.S. then also hunt down a Quincy, which is an even smaller region, just down the road (on a Loire tributary), but with equally strong examples of Sauvignon Blanc, and often (because again its totally unheard of) only at a fraction of the price of a decent Sancerre. Impress your philistine chums also by pronouncing correctly as (phonetically) "Kancy", rather than the horribly incorrect "Kwincy", as in like the American-doctor-detective...a horrible faux-pas in front of the Sommelier (who by his own defintion probably undertands a bit of French).