Domaine du Saut au Loup: Jean-Marie Dozon
Things began to get serious when the third generation, in the shape of Jean-Marie Dozon came on board.
Jean-Marie had led an interesting life before he took over managing the Clos du Saut au Loup. He first studied agronomy, specialising in soil science, before he emigrated to Africa where he stayed for many years, living in Niger, Morocco and the Sahel, the transition zone between the Sahara and the more hospitable African savanna. He only left this life behind when he returned home, in 1973, to take over the running of the family domaine.
By this time the Dozon family still had the 13 hectares in and around the Clos du Saut au Loup, but they rented a number of other parcels nearby, so in total what was known as Domaine Dozon now boasted 23 hectares of vines. Writing in Chinon (Jacques Legrand SA, 1995), Bernard Ginestet describes Jean-Marie’s approach to managing the vineyard as being the actions of a “maniac”. This label was applied simply because Jean-Marie refused to cultivate the soil, and instead he would mulch alternate rows with straw, swapping over which row was mulched every two or three years. None of this sounds like the work of a maniac to me, but it obviously ruffled feathers at the time.
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