A Visit to Alphonse Mellot, 2016: Go Where you are Afraid
Following Alphonse’s lead, we took to discussing the broader appellation, and other vignerons. He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fan of the work of the late Didier Dagueneau.
“I knew Didier Dagueneau since 1984. In making a great wine, you have to go where you are afraid. He wasn’t afraid. Charlotte and Louis-Benjamin, they are like my own children to me. It was a tragedy when he died”.
Indeed, I sense a kindred spirit here. Alphonse Mellot Senior may have been Didier’s senior by several decades, and he may have been missing the messianic hairstyle, but he has the same independent spirit and forthright opinion. He has a sense of self-belief, surely warranted, that gives him the confidence to work in a fashion that is different to his peers, to make wine in new ways, and to create new cuvées. It also gives him the confidence to opine on the work of others. His comments on the wines of a vigneron based in Bué were typical, although the subject of Alphonse’s judgement will, I think, have to remain nameless.
“Him. Yes, I tasted his wines many years ago, when he was a young man. They were shit. I told him so. But, you know, to his credit, he took that opinion on, put it in his pocket, filed it away. He changed things, and he improved. Today his wines are very good”.
In a list of vignerons Alphonse admires, most were very familiar names, in fact I know personally all but one of them. That final unknown name I will be investigating forthwith, so watch this space, as they say.
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