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) 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.
Rosé
We started the tasting with a rosé, before moving through the whites – both Anjou Blanc and Savennières – followed by the red and then the sweet wines, with another rosé inserted somewhere along the way, its position in the line up determined by its residual sugar, as well as a Grolleau-Gamay blend Yves is marketing as a Vin de France. Nevertheless, as I did with my review of Vincent’s wines, I have juggled the order around below in order to try and make the most sense of my notes and I have also omitted including any note already published in my Loire 2012 report in order to avoid duplication.
