100% Chardonnay

Food pairings: Roast chicken or poultry in a cream sauce, seared scallops, lobster, grilled white fish and aged goat cheeses, or simply as a generous aperitif to share with friends.

Winemaking: La Croix is the domaine's emblematic cuvée. The grapes are picked by hand and vinified naturally, with indigenous yeasts and no oenological inputs, then given a long élevage on fine lees, mostly in a range of wooden vessels from 228-liter Burgundy pièces and 350 to 500-liter barrels to demi-muids and foudres, with some stainless steel, enamel and concrete eggs. The wine is bottled without fining or filtration, with little or no added sulfur. The 2022 spent 19 months in élevage and was bottled in April 2024; with time it develops notes of smoke, honey, butterscotch and marzipan.

Vineyards and terroir: The old vines of La Croix, averaging some 75 years, grow in Fuissé on silty, schist-rich soils over finely fragmented volcano-sedimentary rock, a terroir quite unlike the clay and limestone that dominate the rest of Pouilly-Fuissé. The vineyards are farmed organically (Ecocert certified) and biodynamically.

Family and history: The Denogent family began growing vines in Fuissé at the start of the 20th century. Jean-Jacques Robert, son of Andrée Robert née Denogent, took over in 1989 and renamed the domaine Robert-Denogent in honor of his forebears; influenced by Marcel Lapierre and by importer Kermit Lynch, he made the estate a defender of terroir. His sons Nicolas, who returned in 2006, and Antoine, who joined in 2012, have run the domaine since 2015, making sincere, generous "vins paysans" without compromise.

In the pictures: The Robert-Denogent team in their vineyards in Fuissé; the vignerons in the vines; and in the cellar (photos courtesy of Domaine Robert-Denogent).