I last had the pleasure to taste Clotilde Legrand’s 2017 Saumur-Champigny "la Chaintrée" two years ago and the wine continues to blossom beautifully. Though the wine is now eight years of age, it was a "new release" from Madame Legrand’s cellars back in the summer of 2023, as she aged the wine fully three years in cask prior to bottling. This cuvée does not see any new oak, as it is raised in five hundred liter barrels that are three to eight years of age. Today, it offers up a superb bouquet that shows its gently oaky influence in its aromatic blend of cassis, sweet dark berries, cigar ash, tuffeau soil tones, coffee bean, a nice touch of oak and a topnote of juniper berries. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, precise and still on the young side, wit a great core of pure fruit, an excellent foundation of soil, fine-grained tannins and a long, impeccably balanced and complex finish. This is outstanding Saumur in the making, but it still needs several years in the cellar to soften up its undercarriage of tannin.