Domaine Huet: Noël Pinguet
With the passing of the years it is natural for the vigneron to look to the next generation to take on the family domaine, but Gaston’s son, Jean, was not interested. He and his father did not reportedly see eye-to-eye, and he left home in 1968, eventually carving out a very successful career as a photographer. The same year that Jean left his sister Marie-Françoise Huet was married to Noël Pinguet. As it turned out it was Noël, Gaston’s new son-in-law, who would step up to the plate chez Huet, and he did so in a manner no less convincing than Victor or Gaston had done.
Noël Pinguet (pictured) had no real viticultural training; he was not descended from vignerons but was in fact the son of a butcher, and he only met Marie-Françoise by chance during his university years. Nevertheless within a couple of years of their marriage they were ensconced in the little house at the foot of Le Mont (pictured below, looking up over the rooftops from the foot of the première côte), and Noël, leaving behind a life of number-crunching, began to work alongside his father-in-law in the vineyard. Five years later, in 1976, he took complete control of the domaine, although naturally Gaston was never very far away.
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