When I told people I was heading to the Loire Valley to “sniff around for some interesting producers,” they smiled politely and assumed I’d be guzzling rosé beside a château for a week. Which, to be fair, isn’t entirely inaccurate. But behind the vineyard vistas and the semi-obligatory croissant detours, this trip had a serious purpose: to find the next brilliant Loire producer for our members—someone crafting wines that taste like the landscape and hum with a bit of irreverence.

The Loire, in case you haven’t been, is both maddeningly sprawling and consistently charming. It’s France’s most diverse wine region, stretching over 600 miles and encompassing everything from nervy Muscadet by the Atlantic to rich, honeyed Chenin Blanc in Vouvray. In theory, it’s a dream. In practice, it’s a logistical Rubik’s cube with a side of speed cameras.

Day one began in Nantes, a city that smells faintly of butter and sea air, which is precisely what you want before tasting bone-dry Muscadet. My first appointment was with a winemaker who claimed to age his wine on lees for so long it “forgets it was ever a grape.” His cellar was less a facility and more a mushroom-scented bunker. But the wine? Bright as a lighthouse beam and briny enough to make you crave oysters at 10 a.m.

Heading east, I made a detour into Anjou. The wines here, particularly Chenin, have a kind of taut elegance that reminds me of a pianist in a perfectly tailored blazer—disciplined, expressive, and slightly smug about it. I visited a biodynamic grower who talks to his vines daily and claimed one of his barrels had “a naturally occurring D major resonance.” I nodded, took notes, and quietly hoped the wines were as musical as the barrels. They were. Particularly a no-added-sulphur Chenin that tasted like golden apples and beeswax, with a faint whiff of rebellion.

One night I stayed in a chambre d’hôte run by a couple who moonlight as winemakers. Breakfast included homemade goat cheese, quince jelly, and a discussion about oak barrels that became unexpectedly heated. I love the Loire.

The next day took me into Saumur. Here the cabernet franc gets serious—wiry, herbal, and quietly powerful. I met a producer whose winery looked like the set of a spy movie: sleek, subterranean, and moodily lit. Her wines were all structure and shadow, with tannins that moved like slow jazz. I bought a case.

By the time I hit Touraine, my palate was fatigued, my rental car had developed a mysterious beep, and my suitcase was mostly wine. But I still had energy for one more wildcard appointment—a 24-year-old winemaker making pét-nat in an old garage with a disco ball above the press. He explained his process between blasts of Daft Punk. The wine? Bright, fuzzy, and inexplicably joyful. I’ll be honest—I adored it.

By the end of the week, I’d tasted over a hundred wines, made a shortlist of six producers, and developed a fondness for Loire thrift shops (exceptional glassware for €2). I came looking for someone doing things differently, and I found several. What links them isn’t just innovation—it’s that their wines taste alive. They have texture, tension, and just enough weirdness to make you lean in.

Back home, the shortlist will get a second round of tasting, preferably without jet lag. But I already have a hunch which bottle is going to make it into our members’ next box. It’s the one that made me smile mid-spit and scribble in my notebook: “Yes. This one. Must share.”

Until then, if you need me, I’ll be figuring out how to import wine from a garage with a disco ball.