Loire Valley Vintage Chart — Best Years to Buy
The Loire is where France keeps its honesty. Freshness, minerality, and restraint across Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, and Cabernet Franc, at a fraction of what Burgundy or top-flight Sancerre command on a wine list. This is a wine vintage chart by region: here is how every Loire vintage from 2015 to 2024 stacks up by style, and which years are worth your money right now.
Skip the chart for a second. Here are the five Loire bottles worth buying today.
If you do nothing else with this page, buy these. Same data as the full grid below, read through one lens: which years drink beautifully now and still cost what they should.
- 2019 Chinon & Bourgueil — the Cabernet Franc vintage of the decade. Ripe, structured, built to age, and not yet priced like the trophy it is. Buy a case.
- 2022 Chinon & Bourgueil — fresh, firm, already a pleasure to drink, and still fairly priced before the market catches up. The everyday answer to 2019’s cellar pick.
- 2019 Sancerre & Pouilly-Fumé — the strongest recent white vintage in the eastern Loire: cut, tension, and the kind of stony length that usually costs double. Drink over the next two or three years.
- 2020 Vouvray — Chenin with both acidity and ripeness, dry through demi-sec, and it sells for a fraction of comparable Chenin elsewhere. The connoisseur’s value pick.
- 2023 Muscadet — the most serious Muscadet in years. Saline, mineral, built for oysters, and still the cheapest great white in France. Buy it by the case.
These are shelf wines, not unicorns. Expect roughly $18–30 for the Chinon and Bourgueil reds, $20–35 for eastern-Loire whites and Vouvray, and $15–22 for a serious Muscadet.
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| Style | ’15 | ’16 | ’17 | ’18 | ’19 | ’20 | ’21 | ’22 | ’23 | ’24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhitesSancerre · Pouilly-Fumé | ★ | |||||||||
| CheninVouvray | ★ | |||||||||
| RedsChinon · Bourgueil | ★ | ★ | ||||||||
| MuscadetSèvre-et-Maine | ★ |
How to read the spread. The single Loire verdict you’ll see on the master chart is a blend of all four styles, so it can’t capture the divergence inside a year. 2018 is the clearest example: Exceptional for the reds and Chenin, but only Very Good for the whites. Read your style’s row, not the regional average.
A note on 2021 and 2024. Both were difficult years. Spring frost and mildew cut the crop, and quality is uneven across the board. There are good bottles in both vintages, but this is not the year to buy on the label alone. Buy by producer, from growers who farmed their way through it.
Read by style
Sancerre & Pouilly-Fumé — Mineral Sauvignon Blanc. Steady at Very Good across the decade; 2019 is the standout, and there is no runaway year, so vintage matters less here than producer. More on Sancerre.
Vouvray (Chenin) — The Loire’s range, dry to sweet and genuinely age-worthy. 2015 and 2018 are the Exceptional anchors; 2020 is the value sweet spot.
Chinon & Bourgueil (Cabernet Franc) — The reds carry the region’s peaks. 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2022 all reach Exceptional, with eight-to-fifteen years of aging in the best bottles.
Muscadet — Crisp, Atlantic, built to drink young. Reliably Very Good; 2023 is the vintage that rewards paying attention.
TERROIR’s read on a decade of Loire vintages, as reported in The Yield. © TERROIR.
Take the whole chart with you.
This page covers the Loire. The full TERROIR Vintage Chart covers every region we track, every recent vintage, on one page you can actually print and fold into a coat pocket. It’s the one page to have open when you’re standing in front of the shelf, and it’s free.
We send it to everyone on The TERROIR Letter, our weekly read on the wines worth your time and the years worth your money.
Loire vintages, answered
What’s the best Loire vintage to buy right now?
It depends on the style, but the single best value on the shelf today is 2019 Chinon or Bourgueil: the Cabernet Franc vintage of the decade, built to age, and still priced like an everyday red. For whites, 2019 Sancerre. For something cheaper that overdelivers, 2023 Muscadet.
Does vintage actually matter in the Loire?
More than almost anywhere in France, because the Loire sits at the cool, marginal northern edge of where these grapes ripen. A warm year and a wet, frosted one produce genuinely different wines, especially for the reds and for Chenin. For Muscadet and Sancerre the swing is gentler, and producer choice matters as much as the year.
How do I read this chart?
Find your style’s row first, not the regional average. The master chart blends all four Loire styles into one verdict, which hides the divergence inside a year. The verdict scale is Good, Very Good, Exceptional. A star marks the years that drink well now and still cost what they should.