Saint-Amour. It must be said that this, the most northerly Cru, has a name that is gentle on both the ear and the heart. It is the wine of poets and lovers. If it didn’t exist, life would hold less charm. The village of Saint-Amour has given its name to a delightful wine. Going back long before that to Gallo-Roman times, a centurion named Amor belonging to the Theban Legion stationed in the Valais region in Switzerland stood out for his Christian faith and was martyred. It appears that the path of love is paved with pleasure and pain and is rarely easy.

Today, Saint-Amour wine has two faces, depending on the soil composition and even the type of vinification. The first, a ‘primeur’ style wine produced from clay and silica soils, is precocious, tender and charming with dominant peach and floral aromas. The second, a wine for laying down, or an autumn wine grown on granite pebbles, is more powerful and fleshy, marked by kirsch and raspberry aromas and a hint of spice evocative of cinnamon. Both are delightful wines, as they should be.