Domaine de Juchepie, 2017 Update
What do you get if you whisk the proprietor of a hardware store, a lover of fine dining, the arts and of theatre, away from his comfortable existence in Belgium and deposit him in the pastoral landscape of Anjou? While this might seem a rather obscure brain teaser, the solution has already been determined for us in Eddy Oosterlinck (pictured below) and his wife Mileine, who made just such a move more than a few years ago. The answer, then, is wines of the highest quality, in both the Anjou Blanc and Coteaux du Layon appellations, and yet also wines that are, I feel, some of the most frequently overlooked by fans of Chenin Blanc or Loire Valley wines in general.
Admittedly, the volumes produced are small, and distribution limited, so I suspect only the most curious and committed of drinkers will expend the effort necessary to track these wines down (the last time I bought any bottles was at the domaine, which was far easier than scouring the world for merchants listing the wines). And yet this does not seem to deter adherents of the wines of Richard Leroy, Mark Angeli, Jo Pithon and family, Claude Papin or any of the other wine world’s Anjou heroes. I find it strange, because these are, across the board, excellent wines. Perhaps we should be encouraging more Belgian hardware storemen to make the move down to the Loire Valley?
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