Tasting at La Table, 2012: Domaine de la Bergerie
There was a still a soft blanket of snow cushioning the vines at Domaine de la Bergerie when we arrived. France had, until late into January at least, been enjoying a relatively mild winter, drier than the norm in many parts, with hours of sunshine much higher than expected. But no more. It was mid-afternoon on the first Saturday in February 2012, and for the first two weeks of this month – the date of this year’s Salon des Vins de Loire – the ‘Hexagon’ had been plunged into a mini-Ice Age. Despite warmer temperatures later in the month, this was France’s coldest February since 1986, and the fourth coldest since 1947. That was a great vintage of course (for Bordeaux, as well as the Loire). A portent of good things to come perhaps? Well, we can hope.
Jim Budd, Tom King (of London’s RSJ restaurant, which surely has the most Loire-heavy list outside of the Loire Valley itself) and I tumbled out of the warmth of our car into the bitter cold outside. We were here to meet proprietor Yves Guégniard (pictured) and to taste his latest wines, followed by the wines of two other leading Anjou domaines, Château Pierre-Bise, where geologist-vigneron Claude Papin holds court, and the indefatigable Vincent Ogereau. But being hardy souls we headed first down into the vineyards, in the company of Yves. And before long we were joined by Vincent. Claude was still busy it seemed, and would join us later.
The snow had obviously lain here a few days; although it looked, from a distance, as soft as cotton wool in the dusky afternoon light, underfoot it crunched and cracked, resisting my weight with a determination that betrayed its icy strength. It had been here for at least a day it seemed, hardened to a concrete-like state by sub-zero temperatures the night before. It lay in neatly delineating rows between and along the vines, white stripes that ran the length of the vineyard here and up over the hill in the distance.
There is a saying among ‘old-timer’ vignerons that Philippe Vatan of Château du Hureau in Saumur told me recently, that a fall of snow is worth one application of fertiliser (it probably sounds better in French). Quite how such a belief came about is something of a mystery, but if vines really grow as if ‘fertilised’ in the summer that follows on from a snow-bound winter, I imagine it may be that a cold winter kills off pests and diseases lurking in the vineyard, resulting in healthier-looking vines, perhaps. Either that, or it reflects a guaranteed topping up of the water table, maybe with greener and happier vines as a result? Whatever the reason, the vines at Domaine de la Bergerie were certainly being well ‘fertilised’ this winter.
