The singular beauty of Vatan is something of which you are likely already aware, so I’ll include a brief note about the aging trajectory of this remarkable Sancerre. ‘Clos la Néore’ is, as it always has been, a wine expressly built to age, a true vin de garde. I don’t mean ‘age’ only in the limited sense of ‘it ages surprisingly well for Sancerre!'  Instead, I mean this is a wine to cellar for years with justified optimism for genuinely exalted pleasure on the other side. The challenge with Vatan, of course, is finding it at all; it's far tougher in magnum. 

The ‘15 is softer and less angular than other recent vintages, with those classic suggestions of sage and lime that seem to be archetypal for this cuvée.  The nose will widen immensely over the next couple decades. - Jason

2016 Vatan offers intense lime, lemon zest, a touch of green mint, basil, and almond skin. There's somehow both nice lees character and superb precision. 2016 is incredibly rich but not weighty, I often tell people it has amazing density without being heavy. I drank this wine over 3+ hours and it was developing more flavors and energy with a crazy long finish.  This is a perfect bottle of wine that may age another 20yrs easy, maybe more out of MAG =). - Daniel

 These are rare magnums of an iconic wine. They are the only available in the US in this format of any vintage. While we are limiting orders to single magnums of each vintage per customer, I encourage you to act quickly if you are interested- quantities are very limited.

More on Vatan: These are magical wines. They are to my mind the perfect vinous analogue to sunshine over seas of rippling grass. Edmond Vatan has taken a back seat to his daughter Anne since 2008, but the brilliance of the wines remains undiminished. The wines issue from old vines within a one hectare parcel within Monts Damnes (itself already an exclusive and universally acclaimed site). 

Even in its youth, Clos la Néore is exuberantly aromatic and tends to provide a kaleidoscopic range of notes: grapefruit, Honeydew melon, lemon and mint. The Vatans have always tended towards picking later and there is certainly an impressively broad midpalate, yet the wines do not lack freshness. On the contrary, these wines trill with brisk acidity and flinty minerality.

Unfortunately, the production of this wine is almost inflexibly miniscule and the quantity that makes it past French restaurant allocations even smaller; usually around 60 cases are imported.