When we have already tasted hundreds of wines and our pulse-rate hasn’t quickened at all, we start to wonder if there’s something wrong with us not the wines, until we stumble on a wine like this stunning Jasnières and our heart starts racing, our pupils dilate, we feel giddy and we recognise that old, familiar feeling.

We're actually on the Loir here, not the Loire, a small tributary about an hour south of the racing town of Le Mans. Jasnières is a tiny appellation with just 70ha declared and Domaine Gigou have 8 of those. Ludovic is using old vines grown on silex-flecked clay soils to produce outstanding and age-worthy Chenin Blanc.

If you need a reminder of what a ‘mineral’ wine tastes like, do give this wine a try. It’s made from Chenin Blanc, but it feels like it has found its way into the bottle via fissures in a rockface, over crumbled stone and through broken flint that was split with a pickaxe. That would be no good if it didn’t have the balancing succulence of sweet fruit and in-between the cracks you will find yuzu, apricot, lime and pineapple. Old vines here, averaging 70 years in age, from soils rich in silex. Barrel fermented then aged 50% in foudre and 50% in smaller format oak. Barrels vary in age from 2 to 6 years old. 12.5% alc. Drink now-2029.

Organic.

Press review:

Tamlyn Currin for JancisRobinson.com: “Sweet woodruff, honey, lanolin and pears. While Mabileau’s Chenin tasted like the gods were at war over the firmament, Gigou’s Chenin tastes like the dryads are holding a Spring flower festival in a wild meadow around a stone circle. It’s so damn pretty but also, beware, bewitching. The honey (light, redolent with acacia blossom) and pears (golden skins, dripping, a little raspy) are framed in herbs so perfumed and intoxicatingly pungent that I am sure they’re used for spells. The energy at the heart of the wine is tiny but fierce, as if the dryads harnessed a bee to power the light that fills every liquid-sunlight molecule of this wine. Wild orange on the finish. And then the stones. Stones on the finish. Flowers growing out of the stones. Good Value. Drink now-2034.” 17.5 points