Domaine Les Hauts Pémions, Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine sur Lie 2024

Muscadet gets a bad rap, unfairly so, and wines like this are the rebuttal. Les Hauts Pémions sits in the Sèvre et Maine, the heartland of the appellation and the only part worth arguing about. The 2024 is a sur lie release, meaning the wine has spent time resting on its spent yeast cells after fermentation, which gives it that characteristic savouriness and textural weight that lifts it clean above the watery, anonymous Muscadet of the 1980s that gave the whole region its reputation problem. Melon de Bourgogne is a grape of almost wilful restraint: no aromatics, no showmanship, just stony precision and a mouth-watering acidity that makes it one of the great seafood wines on earth. The 2024 vintage delivered freshness and good natural acidity across the Loire, and this is drinking brilliantly now. Don't overthink it. Open it cold, pour it generously, and put something from the sea in front of it.