Charles Joguet: Other Vineyards
Beyond the Clos de la Dioterie and Clos du Chêne Vert, the other Joguet vineyards are certainly also worthy of our attention. I know this from personal experience, in particular having enjoyed some wines from Les Charmes with a few years bottle age. The best of the rest, however, is probably Les Varennes du Grand Clos.
The other noteworthy Joguet vineyards are led by Les Varennes du Grand Clos, which sits alongside the Vienne near Sazilly, directly adjacent to the Clos de la Dioterie. The soils are part sandy-clay, part sandy-gravel, over limestone. The vines were partly replanted between 1962 and 1976, producing a vineyard of mixed age, those vines that remained being forty years older than the vines going into the ground at that time. It was as a result of this arrangement that Charles Joguet developed the concept of vinifying according to vine age. The vines, which cover 4.5 hectares all told, are harvested at an average yield of 40 hl/ha.
As mentioned above, this vineyard was also the site of a single hectare of vines planted on their own rootstocks in 1982. The first vintage from these vines was in 1986, and yet by 1992 it was already necessary to replace half of the vines as they had succumbed to phylloxera, and in 1995 the remaining half-hectare was also replanted. Since then the plot has unsurprisingly succumbed to the louse once again and in late 2006 François-Xavier Barc told me that there would be no more Franc de Pied after the 2005 vintage, as he intended to rip up the vines and replace with grafted rootstock. I think despite this intention the vines were not actually pulled up until 2007 though. Whatever the exact date, they are certainly now long gone.
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