Henri Bourgeois, 2024 Update
Hands up if you have been more than a tad confused by the portfolio of wines from Henri Bourgeois over the years.
Both my hands are up.
It is not just the sheer breadth of the portfolio, which reflects the Bourgeois family’s significant holdings in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, which they then top up with a range of négoce wines from across the Central Vineyard appellations. And its not the fact that they seemed to change the name of the business from Henri Bourgeois to Famille Bourgeois a few years ago, only to then restrict that new name to a handful of cuvées parcellaires (a move which, by the way, I am told is set to be reversed, so everything will soon be under the Henri Bourgeois name once again).
It was more the fact that, with so many wines in the line-up, too many of them hid their origins behind longstanding but rather obscure names. What does the name La Bourgeoise, for example, tell you? Or La Demoiselle de Bourgeois? Is it a parcel, or a blend, a brand name, or something else? And why persistent with the old-fashioned labels? I often adored what came out from the bottle, but found the presentation to be something of an enigma.
Happily my synapses will smoke a little less feverishly (well, here’s hoping) when I next encounter a wine from Henri Bourgeois though, as the 2022 vintage sees many of the wines presented with new, frankly much smarter labels, and half a handful of the cuvées have been rechristened with more modern monikers. Out go the ornate gilt-trimmed labels of old, in come a series of snazzy new hand-drawn labels. I was never a fan of the Famille Bourgeois ‘rebranding’, but these new labels are a huge improvement and one change I can certainly get behind.
