Champalou 2025 Vouvray Les Fondraux (Sec Tendre), Loire Valley

The Champalou family has been producing top quality Vouvrays for decades, and we are privileged to have supported them for our entire history.  The "Les Fondraux" bottling is a tad richer than the estate's dry-styled Chenin Blanc, and a kiss of fruitiness makes it a suitable partner with some very challenging wine meals, like duck a l'orange, Thanksgiving dinner, many Asian foods, and anything with "Veronique" in the name.  100% Chenin Blanc.

This Kermit Lynch import has been on The Wine Country’s shelves since our inception in 1995.  The reason?  Purity.  45 year old vines.  Family owned.  Impeccable, true flavors.  Take your pick.  Here is what Anthony Lynch recently wrote about the Fondraux:  “Crafting impeccably balanced, off-dry wines like this is no simple task, but the Champalou Fondraux rolls over the tongue so fluidly that you might be tempted to think the berries tasted just like this when they were picked off the vine. It comes down to masterful winemaking, in which precision and savoir faire replace the need for technological intervention to create a velvety, suave Vouvray that oozes class. The contrast of ripe, succulent Chenin Blanc fruit with a spike of flinty minerality is like licking honey off an arrowhead.”

“Does this wine have some sweetness? Yes. Is this a sweet wine? Absolutely not. The sweetness—more like a honeyed roundness—is at the front of each sip, then whisked away by the same brisk finish as their Vouvray sec. This is no accident. Walking a razor’s edge between sec and demi-sec, Céline Champalou obsessively monitors the fermentation and stops it when the balance between lusciousness and verve is just right.”—Dustin Soiseth, Kermit Lynch Imports