The VinePair Podcast: ‘Sip Fresh’ With Centre-Loire Wines

In Centre-Loire, a region located in the heart of France, there are 695 winemakers who cultivate family values, offer sincere gestures, and are constantly searching for perfection in their wines. The 10 vineyards of the Centre-Loire region — Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, Menetou-Salon, Quincy, Reuilly, Coteaux du Giennois, Châteaumeillant, Pouilly-sur-Loire, Côtes de la Charité, and Coteaux de Tannay — have France’s greatest wild river as their playground: the Loire.

It’s the most diverse wine-growing region in France, specializing in white wines crafted with Sauvignon Blanc grapes and reds and rosés made from Pinot Noir. In addition to those two grape varietals, the region offers wines made from Gamay, Pinot Gris, Chasselas, Chardonnay, and Melon de Bourgogne. No matter what your preference is, Centre-Loire has a wine that is sure to please your palate.

In addition to producing a wide variety of wines, each and every bottle produced in Centre-Loire is of the utmost quality. All eight of the regions within Centre-Loire bear the distinction of Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC). To earn this label, each region must follow a stringent set of rules for everything from harvest dates to aging requirements, resulting in top-tier wines; two Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs) complete the Centre-Loire region

On this episode of “The VinePair Podcast,” Zach is joined by Arnaud Bourgeois, managing director of Famille Bourgeois and co-president of the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins du Centre-Loire as well as Yannick Benjamin, owner of Beaupierre Wines and Contento restaurant, as well as the co-founder of Wine on Wheels, to discuss the dynamic, lively, and captivating wines of France’s Centre-Loire region.

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Zach Geballe: In Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe and this is a special episode of the VinePair Podcast, where today I’ve got two fantastic guests. The first is Arnaud Bourgeois, who’s the owner and winemaker at Henri Bourgeois in Sancerre, and the co-president of the Association of Winemakers of the Centre-Loire. Arnaud, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing today?

Arnaud Bourgeois: I’m doing very good, thank you. I’m very pleased to be with you today.

Z: Fantastic, we’ll get to our second guest in just a moment, but Arnaud can you tell me a little bit about your own background? It seems to me that every time I interview a winemaker from France, they’re part of a long lineage of winemakers and grape growers. I know that’s no different for you, so can you tell me a little bit about your own background in wine?

A: Sure. I grew up here in Chavignol, which is very close to Sancerre, right in the center actually of the appellations Sancerre, together with my family. My family has been making wine for 10 generations. I grew up here, then I studied viticulture and enology in Burgundy. I’ve learned to make Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, but also some Chardonnay as well, even though we don’t grow much of Chardonnay in the Centre-Loire.

I travel around the world to discover a lot of wine regions, some completely passionate in any wine of any region. I work here with my family for 30 years. It’s quite a polyvalent role that we’re all having together, with my brother and my cousin. We cultivate wines in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé mainly, and we do also make a bit of wine from other regions like Quincy and Menetou-Salon.

Zach: Very cool. Our second guest today is joining us, I believe, from New York City, and that’s Yannick Benjamin of Beaupierre Wines and Contento Restaurant, co-founder of Wine on Wheels and should be noted, a 2021 VinePair Next Wave award winner. Yannick, how are you doing today?

Yannick Benjamin: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me on, Zach.

Z: Yes, our pleasure, too. I did mention where you are, but can you talk a little bit about your own background in wine? How you came to the wine industry, and maybe a little bit about what you’re doing right now?

Y: Yes, absolutely. I recently opened up a wine store on Nov. 10, 2022. I had the honor and privilege and the good fortune to be able to open up this wine store in the same exact building that I grew up in. It’s a real family affair, which is very hard to do in New York City, and so it’s amazing to come back full circle. My parents live right above the store, my sister lives a building over, so it’s really, really great. This is a project with me and my wife.

Then I have a restaurant that I opened in June 2021 called Contento. The cuisine is predominantly Peruvian, the chef is from Lima. That’s a lot of fun to pair wines with that type of cuisine. Then I have a nonprofit called Wine and Wheels, where we’re actually going to have our first event in four years since the pandemic. All of the money that we raise for that is to support people with disabilities right here in New York City. We have about 50 different restaurants that participate, over 60 sommeliers. It’s just a really great event to bring awareness and educate the mass public about people with disabilities.

Z: Fantastic. Well, I thank you both for joining us and now let’s get a little bit to the matter at hand here. Arnaud, let’s start with you. You mentioned that you’re in Chavignol and that you’re within right in the heart of this Sancerre region, but for our listeners who are not as familiar with this Centre-Loire, can you tell us where in France we are and a little bit about the region around?

A: Sure. We are situated exactly 200 kilometers south of Paris. If you draw a diagonal from northwest to southeast and another one from northeast to southwest, we are right at the crossroad of this diagonal. The main cities around us would be Orléans or Nevers or Bourgogne, which is about 40–50 kilometers from us. We are just on the left and right side of the Loire River depending if you’re in Sancerre or in Pouilly-Fumé.

Z: Fantastic. Obviously, the Loire River is a huge defining feature of the region, and we’ll get a little more into the wines themselves in just a moment. I want to just set the landscape a little more for people.

What does the surrounding area look like? Are we talking about a flatter river delta, hills? Paint us a picture.

A: Well, the Centre-Loire region is basically made with quite a lot of hills and terraces, depending [on] where you are. Well, if we speak about Sancerre, actually I’m seated right here in the winery. In front of me, there is a huge hill which is called Damned Mountain, for example. It has been created, all these hills. back in the secondary and tertiary eras. When the sea left the region — we’re talking  65 million years ago — it left some sediments and some hillsides. Thanks to a very important movement of the ground tectonic plates, which created the river that we are having in the center of France. It’s everything but flat, that’s for sure.

A: That’s actually an amazing place because you are not in the massive Saint-Paul but it looks like a little bit the massive Saint-Paul with vines planted on the south, southwest, southeast-facing slopes. The rest would be planted with native and on top of these hills on the plateau, we will have cereals because historically, cereals and vines have been a combined agricultural activity that was practiced by most of the family here in Sancerre.

Z: Then just one last question about the region, and then we’ll talk more specifically about some of the wines. For our listeners who are familiar with Sancerre, they’ll know that it’s predominantly planted the Sauvignon Blanc and then Pinot Noir on the red side. What are some of the other grapes varieties that people can find in the Centre-Loire more generally?

A: Well, of course, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir represent the most important part of what we find in the Centre-Loire. Otherwise, we find also some Pinot Gris. We do have a little bit of Chardonnay as well. We do have a Gamay of the appellation Châteaumeillant, for example, where we cultivate a bit of red but the percentage, obviously, is not that big. Interesting wines that we produce as well from Gamay and Pinot Gris but also Chardonnay from the region of Centre-Loire.

Z: Very cool. Yannick, let’s come back to the States here for a moment and talk a little bit about some of these wines in a restaurant setting, in a wine shop setting. I think within the appellations and the wines of the Centre-Loire, you have a couple of different ways to look at this. We’ll talk a little more about Sancerre specifically because again, for many of our listeners, that will be, if they’re familiar with a region, just one region or appellations from this region, it will be Sancerre.

When we’re talking about some of these other appellations, Pouilly-Fumé, some of the others, when you’re talking about wines made from grapes that people are very familiar with but where they may not be super familiar with the appellations itself. How do you talk about those wines? How do you get people as excited about them as they might be about something from an appellation that they’re more familiar with?

Y: That’s a great question. I think there are two things that really works in favor for this particular region. One, it’s Sancerre. Gosh, it’s on the tip of everybody’s tongue and it’s still the one region where there is such demand for especially opening up the wine store. It was just eye-opening to hear how many people ask for Sancerre and then the grape Sauvignon Blanc.

I think having that as a reference point is really key. Yes, of course, these smaller appellations that we’re talking about are definitely maybe off the grid for a critical mass but I think, having a strong understanding of what Sancerre is, of that particular area around it, and understanding Sauvignon Blanc, I think is a very good way to start off and really connect with critical mass and wine lovers in general. That’s what I really try to do. If I do carry any of these smaller appellations that may be unknown, I definitely use Sancerre as a reference point.

Z: That makes total sense to me. I think it’s probably understandable, again, to listeners. It gives you, if nothing else, a frame of reference. Let’s talk a little bit more about the wines that are made there because I think, again, we’ll talk about some of the specific wines but stylistically, what defines in your eyes the wines of the Centre-Loire. If we were to talk about unifying characteristics things that seem to hold true across some of these different appellations and terroirs. What is it that defines the wines of the region in your eyes?

*A: Well, first of all, we all know that Sauvignon Blanc is cultivated all over the world, basically, in most of the most important countries which produce wine. What we want to produce, what we believe we can express from the Centre-Loire region, is a Sauvignon Blanc, but not only the pure expression of the Sauvignon Blanc. I would easily use words like “minerality,” “elegance,” “finesse,” and “freshness” because that’s typically the style of the wine that we produce from our region. It’s something to do with what is naturally existing in terms of soil types, but also the climate.

We are in the center front. We are not very close to the Mediterranean Sea. That means that the climate is more continental. That means that we have often probably exposure to the sun, which [means] wine with less alcohol and better acidity when we pick the fruit, even if aromatically they’re ripe. Thanks to this gift of nature, the Sauvignon Blanc that we produce here in the appellation Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, and the Centre-Loire in general, would be expressing this freshness, this finesse, and also the mineral character, which is a big identity. It’s definitely the DNA of our Sauvignon Blanc here.

Z: Do you feel like that freshness and minerality carries across not just the 10 different appellations of the Centre-Loire, but across even to some of the other styles of wine? I know that there is — as we mentioned before, obviously — some red wine made both from Pinot Noir and Gamay, as you mentioned. Then, I believe also probably some sparkling wine. Is that something that you think someone picking up a bottle from anywhere within the region, from almost any style of grape, that minerality, that freshness, that purity is going to come through through that?

A: Very much so. Actually, even in Pinot Noir, sometimes we are very surprised to have this very mineral character. For Pinot Noir, we never use really the word “minerality” when we speak about the expression of this grape variety, but in the Centre-Loire, we often do. Of course, from the Loire region in general, we also aim to produce wine with an easygoing drinkability, I would say. Juicy with a lot of fruitiness, a good concentration, very charming, very seducing. On top of that, again, the complexity comes from the mineral characters that we pick from the various types of soil which cover the Centre-Loire. Maybe that’s another question for later about the different types of soil.

Z: Yannick, I want to come back to you for a moment because I think that some of what Arnaud is talking about is so resonant to — I think, maybe to you and to me, as wine professionals. When you hear a producer or someone from a region talk about this drinkability, freshness, minerality, whether you’re looking at it from the context of a restaurant, maybe even when paired with Peruvian food or potentially just at in the wine shop, something to take home. How do you convey that message to guests, to customers and get them excited?

I think those all sound like very appealing qualities to me, so it’s not that you have to do a lot besides say that. How do you translate that into a sale, for lack of a better way of putting it?

Y: For sure. Certainly, I can speak on the American market. The palate has definitely evolved and people are looking for freshness and they’re looking for more fruits that are tart. Typically, maybe 15 years ago, you’re talking about more on the jammier side, more full-bodied, more oak, more vanilla presence. Now, people are looking for more of an angular, linear style.

That’s a really big advantage for this part of the wine world here in the center of the Loire Valley, where these wines really offer this saltiness to it, these more cranberry-rhubarb aromas when we’re talking about Gamay and Pinot Noir. Even when we talk about rosé, gosh, the quality of rosé in the Loire Valley, and in this area, too, is just out of this world, and certainly rivals some of the best in Provence. Typically everyone would come in and say, “Hey, I want a rosé from Provence.”

Now, you can easily show, “Hey, well, if you like those wines, maybe you want something even a bit more delicate, fresher, more salinity to it. What about this Pinot Noir from this part?” Right away, people love it. Then once they try it, they can’t have enough of it. That is really what’s happening. That’s what I have seen. I think it’s to the advantage of a place like this, where people are looking for the crunchy red fruit.

Z: Absolutely. Arnaud, as you alluded to a moment ago, let’s expand our view out a little bit. As is perhaps understandable, it’s easy to focus on the best-known appellations. Can you talk a little about some of maybe the other appellations in this Centre-Loire, and if they’re, to your eyes, defined through whether it’s the specific geography or whether it’s the soil composition, how do we set some of these individual appellations apart? In some cases, I think, you mentioned maybe, even the specific varieties they focus on perhaps, outside of that more dominant Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir paradigm for most of that region.

A: Yes. First of all, we have in common limestone, the calcareous type of soil. It’s a very important common point because it has a direct positive impact on the style of the wines. I’m not saying when you drink a Sancerre, you drink a Pouilly-Fumé or Quincy or Menetou-Salon because they would have their own personality and expression. Because of this common technical aspect, it brings a certain expression already when you drink them very much in common.

First of all, I would like to mention that Sancerre is only 3,000 hectares and Pouilly-Fumé is 1,200. Menetou-Salon, for example, we’re talking about 600, Quincy, 300, a little bit more than that. We’re talking of very small appellations.

We are all on top of each other, I would say. We are all gathered together in a very small area if you see what I mean. It takes only an hour to go to Quincy from Sancerre, and it takes another 30 minutes to go to Châteaumeillant, for example. Of course, that means that those appellations accompanying the Centre-Loire are in common, very much the main styles that we can find in the Sauvignon Blanc, in the Pinot Noir, and Gamay as it comes to Châteaumeillant. I hope it does answer your question. We can individually find authenticity and the very specific expression on each of these different terroir and appellation in Menetou-Salon, Quincy, and Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé but, in general, they would, first of all, express more or less the same character.

In terms of winemaking, they are all made with more or less the same method. By law, we cannot have residual sugar in our wine. That means that they’re dry and fruity. They’re dry and crispy, and they’re very generous in flavors. In a way, they look the same or taste the same for the Sauvignon Blanc and for the Pinot Noir, even though in Sancerre, for example, thanks to the fact that they already have it a little bit more accentuated, I would say, we have wines with a stronger personality, with probably bigger muscles, with more power, with also a potential of aging for those who like to age. Also, the finesse that we can expect after a few months, a few years from appellations like Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé would probably be going to a different dimension, knowing that we like to drink Quincy, Menetou-Salon when they’re a bit younger because they’re expressing such wonderful and intense flavors.

Z: I have to ask a little bit of a follow-up here because I’m curious. When you’re talking about the relative size of the various appellations, you talked a lot at the beginning about the landscape. To me, that would lead me to believe that probably what we’re looking at, throughout the Centre-Loire, is a lot of smaller vineyards, family-owned operations, a lot of grower-producers, things like that. Is that accurate? Is it mostly a family-run enterprise in the Centre-Loire?

A: Absolutely. We’re talking 6,000 hectares in total, that the Centre-Loire region covers. We’re talking 600 winegrowers, winemakers. The average size of each vineyard, I would say, is quite small, as you can understand. It’s also a part of the soul that we find in the Centre-Loire. Basically, most of the wine farms, they’re in the hands of the generation which have been in the region for ages. They know very much about their soil, their sub-soil, terroir, the different climate difficulties, the advantages as well, which is definitely a plus. They know their land by heart. They know all the subtleties and of course, we’re still learning, though. We learn every year because of global warming, which gives us some new challenges basically, we’re talking of the small size of vineyards and wineries which represent the composition of plenty of different families, knowing each other and creating a stimulation between each other.

Z: Yannick, I want to come back to something that Arnaud was mentioning a moment ago, talking about Sancerre. I think if it’s also something that comes up with some of the other appellations, I would love to hear that, too. I always found it interesting when looking at something, a region like Sancerre, where people you said, come in, they have this great desire to drink Sancerre. It’s top of mind for a lot of wine drinkers.

Yet, I think there’s maybe a misunderstanding among a lot of the drinking public about Sancerre that they view it as all one and the same thing. Yet, I think we see that within the appellations and maybe from producer to producer, there is actually a lot of variation whether that’s driven by the specific soils of an individual vineyard site, or to some extent, maybe the production method.

Can you maybe explain to listeners, how you talk about Sancerre in particular, and how you explain to people that actually this region that they’re very excited about, has even more complexity than they might be aware of?

Y: Yes. That’s a really great question and an important one. I think for a long time, the wine consumer just had this one stylistic idea of what Sauvignon Blanc was. I think a lot of that had to do with a lot of mass production that was happening on the South Island of Marlborough [in New Zealand] which, on one hand, was a good thing. It definitely put Sauvignon Blanc on the forefront and definitely embedded that into people’s brains.

On the other hand, everyone just had this conception that, well, it was either jalapeño, fresh-cut grass, grapefruit, or citrus, all the aromas that we certainly associated with. Very rarely did we ever associate Sauvignon Blanc with terroir. Certainly, again, this is changing. As time goes on, more and more people have become more educated and understanding that, yes, there’s a certain style that comes from Marlborough. There’s a certain style of sauvignon blanc that comes from Stellenbosch [in South Africa]. There’s a certain style that comes from Napa. All different personalities.

Now, when you even break it down into micro-appellations, people are starting to understand that even in a place like Sancerre, it changes from village to village. Sauvignon Blanc is no different than how Chardonnay is grown in Chablis because Chablis is a small little village. It’s grown predominantly on the same soils. If you go from one vineyard to another, the actual grape expresses itself quite differently. It’s also dependent on the winemaker as well, whether they want to put a small percentage of new oak when they harvest, so on, so on, et cetera, et cetera.

Really having that explanation to people, I think it’s really up to the sommeliers, to the people that are involved with wine, to really educate themselves to do the research, and then to be able to distill that and really explain that to the guests themselves. I think more than ever, gosh, consumers are so educated. If you give them the right terminology and you explain it to them and you break it down, they’re there to listen and they understand it and they get it.

Z: Arnaud, I want to pick up on something that you were talking about a moment ago, I think, specifically with maybe some of the challenges that climate change is presenting to growers and producers in the Centre-Loire. Talk more generally about how things might have been changing over the last couple of decades, whether that’s changes that are being made in the vineyards, in the wineries, or just more generally. Again, whether that’s about climate change or just other things. How have some of these generations-long businesses and enterprises been changing of late?

I always find that fascinating that even though sometimes we have, I think, almost a bad habit of looking at these regions and appellations as being static and unchanging, it’s true that beneath the surface there is a lot of change happening, I think, in a lot of these places. Whether driven by necessity, by the weather, or driven by a new generation coming along and saying, “Hey, I want to make these changes or do something a little different than maybe my parents did.” Is that going on in the Centre-Loire as well?

A: Yes, I really believe so. First of all, of course, in most wine regions in France, the producers used to be influenced just after the Second World War by the necessity to produce because they didn’t have a choice. They had to really make a living and they focused more on how they could produce, of course, in the best way.

I would say that in the last 30, 20 years there has been a concern on how can I grow in probably a more clever way as it comes to the environment, as it comes to the vines. How can I offer the best conditions to the vines to produce good quality fruits, healthy fruits?

Thanks to the new technology but I would say, with the knowledge that we have in viticulture and enology, we know that the vine is the base of everything. If we do not have very good quality fruit, it will not be possible to make top-quality wine, I would say, a premium wine.

There has been probably more local wine growers paying attention to the vineyard, particularly probably in the last 20 years. We realized since 2003, which has been a very hot vintage, that the production, the style of the wine, can be or could be affected if we do not do anything. We also realize, on the other hand, that in a region like Centre-Loire, even if we have a global warming, that we have noticed, that’s for sure as the wines are still showing the main characteristics that they have been showing since a long time. We still have freshness. We still have minerality without really changing radically a lot of our practices in the vineyard.

It’s just due to the fact that we spend probably much more time in the vineyard looking after the vineyard, understanding what the vines need at a proper moment of the year, and I think it’s very good. Otherwise, in our region, we have all invested a lot of money in having proper equipment in the winery, to make wine in the best conditions. We now are able to refrigerate the vat to make sure we control the temperature of the fermentation, for example, which is important because we all know that during an alcoholic fermentation, the temperature is going to go up. If we want to express the terroir, we need the temperature to keep the alcoholic fermentation at a certain level, etcetera, etcetera.

I really believe that there have been a lot of efforts here in the Centre-Loire to control the quality, to increase the quality and precisely in the vineyard. It has offered, I believe, the production of wines at an even more premium level.

Z: Fantastic. Okay, Yannick, we’ve talked a lot about the wines, we’ve talked a lot about some of the characteristics. Even just now, Arnaud is talking about freshness and minerality and all these things that are just like flashing lights for a sommelier to say, “Okay, these are great wines to pair with foods.”

Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the classic pairings for these wines? Then, if you have some other favorites that maybe go beyond that classic Centre-Loire paradigm into other cuisines or other foods, I would love to hear them as well.

Y: For me, I think the most important rule to follow is to make sure that the wine is bigger than the actual dish so that the dish doesn’t overwhelm the wine. That’s really an important rule that I try to follow and try to stay strict with. There was a great restaurant that was open for a couple of years in Paris, and what you would do is you would order the glass of wine and they would construct a dish based on that bottle or a glass of wine that you ordered, which was really crazy. It was a cool concept, but obviously not sustainable.

That would be the ideal situation, clearly, but of course, traditional cuisine to go with these types of wines, lighter. You would go with something seafood-based or white meats. I think the key is when you have a great bottle of wine or a great glass of wine, when you have the actual dish or the food, simplicity is what you need. As long as you get great ingredients, they’re going to really complement each other to the fullest. That’s really key.

To go off the grid, generally speaking, I absolutely love Persian and Arab food, Turkish cuisine with a great Sauvignon Blanc, or even a great Pinot Noir, Gamay, they really complement each other. All these fresh vegetables, slightly charred, really just complement each other really beautifully. Lebanese cuisine is another great option too, as well, no doubt about it. If you want it to go sushi or even ramen, the ramen with the high levels of salinity, the saltiness that you go there that it has, goes really well with the saltiness and salinity of the Sauvignon Blanc that you would find in the Centre-Loire, or even the Pinot Noir too, as well.

Things of that nature. Especially Eastern Asian cuisine, I think, is really a beautiful match made in heaven because there’s such a delicate component to it. Again, we’re in season, it’s fresh vegetables. Get a couple of fresh vegetables, don’t overthink it. Just keep it simple and pair it with those wines, and you’re going to find the really perfect pairing.

Z: Fantastic. I want to leave us with this last question. One of the things that I love doing when we have the opportunity to talk to people from wine regions, particularly in Europe, but anywhere that’s not here, in Seattle for me, is to think about what a visit might be like, understand what coming to the Centre-Loire would be like. I know you talked a little bit about where we are, and what some of the cities are, but what is visiting the region like? What are some of the other things to do? Not that drinking wine is a bad reason to go visit a region, I do it lots of the time. If someone were to think about a trip that involves some wine and some other activities, what else is there to do in the region?

A: As a region of Centre-Loire there are plenty of activities which can be done. First of all, in any boutique or place where you want to buy food, meat, bread, or patisserie, whatever, there is always a very good welcome atmosphere. This is a region where people are so happy to have visitors. They’re used to it because they are visited by the whole world. I don’t know how many nationalities visit the region of Centre-Loire but it’s very big. Otherwise, just the beauty of the region, you just feel like taking a bike, well, maybe an e-bike because a bike you need to be a bit sporty — and go from one hill to the other one just to contemplate the view from the top of the hills of Sancerre, for example, or from the top of the Damned Mountain, the views are just amazing.

You can walk through the vineyard, you can visit some tasting room, and we are very spoiled with the gastronomy. We have plenty of those restaurants. Yannick was talking about the pairing with food, but even if it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon and you have to ride a bicycle for two hours, you just feel like having a piece of goat cheese together with a good Sauvignon Blanc from Les Caillottes, from the chalky soil, and then you go down because you’re warm, you need to go down to the Loire River to swim a little bit. Then you sleep a bit because you’re tired of the whole trip through the hillside.

That’s exactly the lifestyle that we can offer to the visitors knowing that it’s very easy. Only two hours from Paris and people really are happy to go down. We actually received, at the beginning of last week, visitors from America who didn’t want to go. Believe me or not, in Sancerre, we have more and more population made of Americans. They bought houses, they love it so much, they fell in love with the region.

Z: Fantastic. That sounds lovely. I’m going to get to work on planning that vacation. I definitely am going to need the e-bike. I want to say thanks so much to both Yannick and Arnaud, for taking this time with us to help us understand this really exciting and dynamic region in France, the Centre-Loire. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for your time, really appreciate it.

A: Thank you, Zach. Thank you very much, Yannick.

Y: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all of this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team, who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.