An approachable, racy, mineral delight from a cornerstone producer in a heritage French region.
Producer: Jo Landron
Region: Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, Loire Valley
Grapes: 100% Melon de Bourgogne
Price: $18
In Brief
Body: Light
Character: Mineral-Driven
Flavors: Lemon-lime, Green Apple, Chamomile
Pairings: Aperitif, Shellfish
The Wine
Muscadet wines are well-known for being lean, mean, mineral machines, and Jo Landron’s cuvées follow suit. The nose is a little reticent at first, giving mostly lemon verbena and talc. The palate is lively and bright, with lemon-lime, green apple, and wildflower notes. At every point on the palate, acidity is the name of the game, and the wine’s long, wet-stone mineral finish keeps going and going. Oysters are the classic pairing with Muscadet, but any shellfish dish will be an excellent mate.
The Story
Winemaker Jo Landron is as famous for his jovial spirit and enormous mustache as he is for his stunning wines. A fixture on the Muscadet scene for decades, Landron made the once-radical choice to convert to organics in the 1980s; since then, he has been a regional leader for excellence in the cellar and stewardship of the land. Muscadet is France’s westernmost growing region, and while it’s commonly confused for a sweet wine (thanks to its homonymic relationship with often-sticky Muscat/Moscato), the mineral-laden soils of this Atlantic coastal region contribute fierce structure and acidity to the local Melon de Bourgogne grape, from which most of the region’s wines are made. Once part of an ocean basin, it isn’t unusual to find fossilized seashells among Muscadet’s vines. Pro tip: Muscadet is both the name of the region where the wines are made as well as the general reference name for the wine, just like Champagne.
