Henri Bourgeois is one of those producers that any wine region would be lucky to have. They combine size and quality, which is important, because it means there's a reasonable amount of wine to go round. Things started small here: this family-owned domaine was founded with 2 hectares in 1935, plus some polyculture. Now it has 70 hectares of vines (64 in Sancerre and 6 in neighboring Pouilly-Fume), plus a winery in New Zealand (Clos Henri, with 45 hectares in Marlborough). Overall, they harvest 124 plots, 100 of Sauvignon Blanc and 24 of Pinot Noir, and these are kept separate in the winery. The winery, in the beautiful village of Chavignol, is modern, and has five different levels to enable gravity flow. It was built in 2000 and then some more capacity was added in 2013. Some parcels are machine harvested, while the steeper plots are harvested by hand. Three years ago, Bourgeois tested machine versus hand-harvested fruit from one vineyard, taking thee rows from each and making the wine the same way. Eight out of ten tasters preferred the wine made from machine-harvested fruit, but they think the key is to get the grapes as quickly as possible from the vineyard to the winery when machines are used.