A living relic of royal whim. In 1519, François Ier had some eighty thousand Burgundian vines carried to the estate of his mother, Louise de Savoie, near the town of Romorantin — and the grape they carried, another natural child of Pinot and Gouais Blanc, took the town's name and never travelled again.
Five centuries later it survives on some sixty hectares at Cour-Cheverny, the one appellation in the world devoted to it, and nowhere else on earth. Young Romorantin is taut green apple and quince; with age it deepens into honey, beeswax and a lanolin breadth that recalls old Loire chenin without imitating it. A one-village grape, it owes its survival to growers who kept replanting what fashion had every reason to erase.