Claude Lafond
Driving from the vineyards of Touraine up to Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire takes you through a gently rolling and pastoral landscape which is largely devoid of vines. There are just little pockets of viticulture dotted along the way, the three best known being Reuilly, Quincy and Menetou-Salon. Such tiny appellations, relatively isolated, are naturally endangered; indeed, the first of these, Reuilly, once contracted to the point where there were only a few dozen hectares. Today there are more than 200 hectares planted up, the appellation having bucked the trend across some parts of the Loire, such as the generic Touraine appellations, where vineyards are gradually disappearing as they are slowly usurped by other perhaps more profitable forms of agriculture.
That Reuilly somehow survived, against the odds, is largely down to the work of one man, the late Claude Lafond (1952 – 2015), who I was privileged enough to meet back in 2013. This profile examines the story of the man, his domaine, and the appellation in which it sits, as well as looking at the domaine today, run since Claude’s passing in 2015 by his daughter, Nathalie Lafond.
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