Jean-Max Roger Sancerre Les Caillottes

Jean-Max Roger's Sancerre Les Caillottes is a Sauvignon Blanc grown across three villages in the Loire Valley — Amigny, Sancerre proper, and Vinon — where the soils are dense with the calcareous stones the French call "caillottes." This is a single-vineyard bottling that leans into the minerality and structure that distinguish Sancerre from softer Sauvignon Blancs grown elsewhere. The terroir here is all sharp limestone, and the wine tastes like it. The Roger family has farmed in Sancerre since the 1970s, and Jean-Max Roger's estate is now run by his sons Étienne and Julien. The plots that go into Les Caillottes sit on slopes where the topsoil is thin and the limestone bedrock fractures into jagged pebbles — the caillottes themselves. The vines dig deep, and the resulting wines are taut and precise. Fermentation is cool and slow in stainless steel to preserve the aromatics and acidity Sauvignon Blanc is known for. No oak, no malolactic conversion — the focus is on transparency and place. The wine opens with rhubarb, broom flower, and hawthorn, then shifts to grapefruit and lemon on the palate. The structure is dense, the acidity well-integrated, and the finish runs long with lemony brightness and a flinty mineral edge. It's a wine that wants food — grilled oysters, goat cheese from the Loire, roasted chicken with herbs, or a simple plate of mussels with white wine and shallots. Drink it young, or cellar it for three to five years if you want the minerality to soften and the citrus to turn rounder. Available for pickup at our Lincoln Park shop at 1128 W Armitage Ave, local Chicago delivery, or nationwide shipping.