Muscadet—like Burgundy, Champagne, the Mosel, Piedmont, and a few other wine regions of the world—has become known for the terroir of individual parcels. At its best, Muscadet is one of the great, terroir-driven (and cellar-worthy!) dry white wines of the world. And yet, it costs just a fraction of what most of the others do.

This recognition of Muscadet as a region of site-specific terroirs has been a long time coming. That anyone thinks of it as something more than bistro wine is in large part thanks to the Domaine de l'Ecu. For decades, Domaine de l'Ecu has been doing the hard work that seems to have caught on everywhere else only recently: organic farming, non-interventionist wine-making…and generally paying close attention to terroir.

It shouldn’t have taken so long. Muscadet’s geology, sitting at the mouth of the Loire Valley, is complex and varied. And the Melon de Bourgogne grape they grow there expresses those differences with exquisite precision. We all should have been paying attention long ago.

The wines themselves are not super-aromatic; more like Chardonnay than Gewürz or, say, Muscat—a name that is so confusingly similar that generations of wine drinkers shied away from Muscadet, worried the wines were too sweet (they’re really dry!). Such relatively low-aroma wines work to showcase terroir: without the grape’s own perfume dominating, the wines are more transparent and mineral-focused.

Now, like the great Burgundians, Domaine de l’Ecu also recognizes that there is something special not just about individual sites, but about their terroir as a whole. Pick grapes from various places, blend them together, and you get a marvelous expression of something a little bigger, a little less specific, but equally delicious. You get something that you might think of as “classical”.

So it is that the Domaine offers their Muscadet “Classic”. It is true, penetrating, mineral-laser-focused Muscadet. And it is an astounding value:

Domaine de l'Ecu Muscadet Classic 2020 $20.99