Alphonse Senior
In 1947 Alphonse-Edmond was blessed with a son named Alphonse-Roger (the fifth Alphonse), although this is not a name he would answer to. Today everybody knows him as Alphonse Senior. As a boy Alphonse Senior (pictured) was educated in Juilly and Bois-le-Roi, in the rural landscape around Paris, before he enrolled at the lycée agricole at Clermont-Ferrand. He learnt about wine in Beaune before, at the age of 20 years, he returned home to Sancerre to join his father. The two worked alongside one another for a few years before he eventually took over the running of the domaine in 1972, when he was just 25 years old.
When he started out the domaine amounted to just 22 hectares, and he subsequently expanded it to more than double that size, as well as establishing a négociant business on the side. He remains today a hugely significant figure for the domaine, and for the appellation. Indeed, some have described him as the père spirituel de Sancerre, and the way Sancerre has developed during the latter half of the 20th century is probably as much to do with the work of Alphonse Senior as it is with Jean-Marie Bourgeois of Henri Bourgeois as well as Vincent Pinard.
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