Philippe Foreau
Philippe Foreau seems to have been destined to take on the family vineyards and in 1980, having just completed his military service, he joined his father at the age of 23 years. The two worked together for several years, André showing Philippe the ropes, but as one difficult vintage followed another in the first few years of the 1980s Philippe, only half-joking, admits that he began to wonder what he had let himself in for. The 1980 vintage was difficult enough, but then came 1981, when the yield was right down at just 18 hl/ha, principally as a result of a dreadful frost on April 4th. “It was a catastrophe” says Philippe. The 1982 vintage was thankfully a little better, some light relief after two trying years, with higher yields but also higher quality, much more what André and Philippe had been hoping for, although because of rain during the harvest there wasn’t much option to make sweet wines.
The 1983 vintage was when André began to step back from his running of the domaine and allow Philippe Foreau to take over; André was still there for advice but the business was legally signed over to Philippe, and thus Philippe regards 1983 as the first year where he was really in control. And, sadly, 1983 was a year when the hard times continued; the yields weren’t too bad, but this was another vintage dogged by rain and once again it was a largely a year for making dry or sparkling cuvées. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, along came 1984, a very wet year and the fruit on the vines soaked it all up. Again it was a vintage largely for dry or sparkling cuvées. It must have been disheartening for the young Philippe, who came to the coal-face a few years before the Champalou family (who started with just half a hectare in 1983), Bernard Fouquet (who really didn’t start until the late 1980s) and François Pinon (who didn’t take over from his father until 1987). His peers escaped all or most of these very difficult years.
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