What is Sancerre?The Loire's famous Sauvignon Blanc, from a chalk hill in central France to Fiena, King's Cross

Sancerre is a French appellation, an Appellation d'origine contrôlée or AOC, named after the hilltop town of Sancerre in the eastern Loire Valley, south-east of Orléans. It's best known for white wine made from Sauvignon Blanc. There is red and rosé Sancerre too, made from Pinot Noir, but red is only about a fifth of the output and rosé less than one per cent. White Sancerre was one of the original AOCs, awarded in 1936.

The area is part of the Loire's "central vineyards", so called because they're close to the centre of France. Sancerre sits on the west bank of the Loire, almost facing its neighbour Pouilly-Fumé across the river, another famous Sauvignon Blanc. It's more than 480 kilometres from the Atlantic, so its climate is continental, with short, hot summers and long, cold winters.

The town stands on an outcrop of the same chalk that runs from the White Cliffs of Dover down through Champagne and Chablis. Small valleys cut through it, each with its own soil, and growers roughly divide them into three:

• Flint (silex), around the town itself, gives the most aromatic, minerally and long-lived wines.
• Gravel and limestone, "les caillottes", gives lighter, fruity, well-balanced wines.
• "Terres blanches", white clay and limestone soils to the west, towards the village of Chavignol, give wines with more body and power.

Most white Sancerre is unoaked, which lets that minerality show.

Vines were probably first planted here by the Romans, perhaps in the 1st century AD; the foundations of two Roman bridges can still be seen across the Loire at St-Satur, Sancerre's river port. For centuries the area mostly grew Pinot Noir and Gamay for red wine. Then, in the late 19th century, the phylloxera epidemic wiped out most of the vines, and growers replanted with Sauvignon Blanc, partly because it grafted better onto American rootstocks. After the Second World War, Sancerre became a favourite easy-drinking white in Paris bistros, and in the late 1970s and 1980s a push for quality turned it into the elegant, food-friendly wine you now find on restaurant lists around the world. Background from Wikipedia's Sancerre wine page.

On our drinks menu, the Sancerre is from the Loire, France, and described as medium-bodied, full and balanced, with lychee and honey nuances and a fresh mineral finish. If you like Sauvignon Blanc, it's worth comparing with our bright, crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Chile: same grape, a very different place. Other whites on the list include the Gavi di Gavi, the Albarino from Galicia and the Pouilly Fuisse Albert Bichot. See our guide to our wine list, and ask our team about bottles when you order.

Sauvignon Blanc is famously good with fish, seafood and soft cheeses, especially goat's cheese, according to Wikipedia's Sauvignon Blanc page. From our main menu:

• Goat cheese salad, with mixed leaves, walnuts, honey mustard sauce and roasted goat cheese. The classic match.
• Capesante, pan-fried scallops with a lemon buttery sauce.
• Sea bass with capers sauce, a pan-fried fillet in white wine sauce with French beans.
• Risotto asparagus & prawns, with king prawns, seasonal asparagus, parmesan, white wine and butter.
• Caprese, buffalo mozzarella with heritage tomato and basil.

See our posts on salads and light lunches, scallops, sea bass with capers and risotto and seafood.

Guests often mention the drinks as well as the food. One guest who had pasta and risotto wrote that The drinks were also really good. (Google review) Yasmeen found that the cocktails were delicious (Yasmeen, Google review), and Anastasia, who came straight from King's Cross on a December evening, ordered the salmon: So delicious and comforting (Anastasia, Google review).

“It is worth every pound I spent.”

David, Google review, 2026