Much is written about pairing wines with food. A lot of what’s proffered is piffle, which makes the wine wary even more suspicious. Yet this pairing business is irresistible. I’ve been waiting months to write about a wine that demands no less than springtime itself.

Although it’s true that all good wines can take care of themselves in any season (although port in midsummer seems a stretch), there’s no denying that some wines really do come into their own in certain seasons, none more so than Loire Valley chenin blancs.

Now until the first stirrings of fall is the love moment supreme (to borrow gratefully from John Coltrane) for Loire chenin blanc. It is a category of wine that has not gotten its due for decades.

The reasons are many: inept marketing on the part of the Loire’s numerous, often small, producers; a confusing diversity of styles, from ultrasonically dry to marzipan sweet; labels that cite various place names such as Vouvray, Savennieres, or Coteaux du Layon but never say chenin blanc; and not least, there’s a dismaying degree of mediocrity that makes buying Loire Valley chenin blanc a hit-and-often-miss affair.

So why bother? Simply because when a Loire chenin blanc is good it’s not merely good, it’s fabulous. Unique. Elevating. Like spring itself, these wines make you feel glad to be alive. That’s no small achievement for any wine, let alone a white. (Most wine raptures, it seems, are reserved for reds.)

The uniqueness of Loire Valley chenin blanc lies, ironically, in the relative neutrality of chenin blanc itself. Unlike Riesling or muscat, you can’t say that chenin blanc is powerfully flavorful. Yes, it does have some defining characteristics. A good chenin blanc, whether dry or sweet, should have a faint scent of anise or licorice. But beyond that it’s hard to reel off those taste descriptors that trip off the palate with, say, cabernet.

But chenin blanc’s seeming neutrality really isn’t. Instead, it’s an exceptionally sensitive-to-site grape variety. And if the site’s got something to say, then suddenly chenin blanc comes alive, like a drab rock that turns kaleidoscopic when placed under a black light. It’s the “fireworks” quality that sets apart Loire Valley chenin blanc from all others.

This is no small thing. The French have painstakingly, over centuries, discovered just where in the Loire chenin blanc will shine. It was a monastic chore carried out by Benedictine and Cistercian monks starting in the 1100s and continued uninterrupted until the French Revolution. By then, all was known: the soils it likes best; the microclimates where it performs; and that slow, generations-rich understanding of when and how to pick.

This last point, harvesting, is unusually crucial with chenin blanc. Most grape varieties, such as chardonnay or pinot noir, offer very narrow windows of opportunity. There’s a right moment and a wrong – and usually not much leeway in between.

Chenin blanc’s very amenability allows growers the conscious choice of creating a dry wine (you pick early), a moderately sweet wine or demi-sec (you let it hang a little longer, acquiring greater sugar richness); or a full-fledged sweet wine – what the French call moelleux – where you wait for botrytis, or noble rot, to arrive.

This last category is the rarest and most inherently expensive. Botrytis invades the grapes only in late autumn and then not evenly, if at all. In the meantime, the threat of rain is real and potentially devastating. Botrytis shrivels the grapes, increasing the sugar level and acidity while decreasing water content. The result is a thick-on-the-tongue wine with a signature cinnamon-whiff of botrytis. Such wine is thrilling, long-lived, and expensive.

Loire chenin blancs are too extensive to cover in a single column. You’ve got Vouvray, for example, which is an extraordinary chenin blanc that has been swamped by too many industrial versions sloshed onto the market. The artisanal Vouvrays, however, are among the world’s most remarkable white wines.

And you’ve got Savennieres, an ancient chenin blanc revered by the monks who devoted themselves to it. (There’s a great vineyard in Savennieres called La Roche aux Moines, the rock of the monks.) Savennieres takes upward of a decade to fully mature. Then it’s all about minerals, hay, and laser-sharp flavor delineation.

The two wines I’ve waited until springtime to tell you about are among the greatest of all chenin blancs: Coteaux du Layon and Quarts de Chaume. Both are on the sweet side, but like no other sweet wine you’ve ever tasted, I promise you. Not least because of their flavor density and buoyant acidity, both pair beautifully with a good number of dishes. They are more than sunset sippers – although undeniably inviting in that role as well. Both come from the same producer: Domaine des Baumard, a family winery that is one of the Loire’s few superstars.

HERE’S THE DEAL

COTEAUX DU LAYON “CLOS DE SAINTE CATHERINE” 2002, DOMAINE DES BAUMARD

The 2002 vintage in the Loire created some of the loveliest, most perfectly balanced wines seen in the Loire Valley in years. This reveals itself most persuasively in the sweeter-style Loire chenin blancs, such as this stunner from the Coteaux du Layon district.

Composed entirely of chenin blanc, this is a single-vineyard wine from an old monastic site called Clos de Sainte Catherine. The Baumard parcel is a mere 3.36 acres, which is tiny indeed. One sip of this moderately sweet (demi-sec) chenin blanc is sure to bring a smile to your face. It’s infused with a taste of minerals and quince, with a characteristic quinine finish. The acidity is brisk, making it surprisingly refreshing to drink.

Is it a sunset sipper? Sure it is. But try this wine with morels in a cream sauce. You might be amazed at how well the pairing works. The same goes for hot-smoked salmon, as the salty smokiness is counterbalanced by the acidity and tangy sweetness of the Clos de Sainte Catherine. This is a memorable white wine, something that lingers on the palate and in the mind long after the last sip disappears. $39.95.

QUARTS DE CHAUME 2002, DOMAINE DES BAUMARD

When you taste the Clos de Sainte Catherine 2002 you can’t help but wonder: How can it get better than this? The answer is Quarts de Chaume. A grand cru of about 120 acres divided among about a dozen owners, Quarts de Chaume is simply one of France’s greatest white wines, period. Baumard owns 13 acres of vines, an enviable holding.

The unusual name is explained by the fact that the vineyard was sharecropped. Before the Revolution, the vineyard, originally called Chaume, was owned entirely by the Seigneurs de la Guerche, who rented it to the monks in exchange for one-quarter of the crop – the best quarter of the crop, of course. Hence Quarts de Chaume.

What makes this sweet chenin blanc so extraordinary? In a word, breed. Here you find the effects of noble rot, imparting its distinctive spicy note. But running alongside, as it were, is an intense minerality allied to notes of anise, apricot, and quinine. All of this is conveyed effortlessly by superb acidity. Vineyard yields are extremely low, about a ton to the acre. The resulting wine is dense, succulent, and thrilling.

The 2002 Quarts de Chaume from Domaine des Baumard is a benchmark bottling. Already lovely and approachable, experience reveals that Quarts de Chaume from a vintage this good can – and will – improve for upward of 20 years. Does it go with food? You bet. Here I’d choose an old-fashioned dish such as chicken anointed with morels in a cream sauce (it is spring, after all). Or try one of the great combinations: a blue cheese such as Roquefort, Saint Agur or Bleu des Causses. Quarts de Chaume is ideal for such rich, creamy textured blue cheeses. $59.95.