Domaine de la Bergerie, 2013 Update
The afternoon of tasting was drawing to a close, and what an afternoon it had been. This year, in a repeat of last year’s marathon degustation, I had sat down with Claude Papin, Vincent Ogereau and Yves Guégniard (the latter pictured below) in a back room at La Table de la Bergerie, the restaurant that sits within the grounds of Domaine de la Bergerie, for a tasting of everything they had to offer. With the final wine having been dispatched into the crachoir I thought I probably had a few minutes to check my emails before we moved through to dinner. Seeing that the broadband live-box on the far side of the room was not apparently functional – there was certainly no wireless network within the range of my micro-laptop on which I had been typing my notes – I asked Yves if he knew whether it might be coaxed back into life. Unfortunately he confessed immediately that he didn’t have a clue about such things; “I can answer questions about tractors, and presses, and vats” he said, “but nothing to do with IT“.
I’m quite happy with this state of affairs; sure, it meant there was no chance of me checking my emails before dinner, but I think on the whole I prefer Yves as a viticultural and vinification ‘expert’ than as an information technology ‘expert’. The wines he makes on his domaine, located near Champ-sur-Layon in Anjou, are frequently very good and occasionally excellent, and in the case of his Anjou-Villages Evanescence and the Quarts de Chaume he makes without a doubt some of the most stunning examples of these appellations that I have ever tasted. Yes, please don’t worry about the computers and the broadband box Yves, you just keep making those wines.
Please log in to continue reading: