Safety belts should be compulsory when drinking this wine. In fact, any Anjou Blanc Sec that’s worth its salt should propel you forwards and push your eyes back into your head. It’s a wine for thrill-seekers who don’t wince when they encounter the G-force of northern European acidity. Cutting-edge winemaker, Thibaud Boudignon, has fashioned a beauty from the 2020 harvest in the Loire. Pale straw in colour and displaying aromas and flavours of apple granita, lime pith, grapefruit and just a hint of honeycomb or wax or pollen or something of interest to bees. The palate has laser-like precision and focus and will only become more and more interesting as it unclenches over the next decade. 12.5% alc. Drink now-2033.

Press review:

Vinous: “A pure, clean wine with delectable purity. There are delicate flavours of just-ripe pineapple, citrus, nettles, and a subtle hint of vanilla. It is fermented and aged in both 500 litre barrels and oval Stockinger ‘cigars’. A line of acidity pulls the wine through to a refined conclusion. It can be approached now for its refined fruit, but will go on. Drink now-2033.” 91 points

The Wine Advocate (previous vintage): “Boudignon's 2019 Anjou Blanc is pure, elegant, intense (in a delicate way) and chalky on the nose. It is full-bodied and concentrated but refined and perfectly balanced on the palate, with ripe and lush fruit aromas, lingering salinity and fine mineral grip. This is an intense, sustainable, very finessed and stimulating, almost Chablis-like Anjou that is a great pleasure to drink even today. I tasted the wine from the same bottle again after 34 days, and it was still absolutely fresh, tight, intense and simply gorgeous. Drink now-2034.” 92 points