Château Soucherie, 2018 Update
Château Soucherie is a fairly smart property which sits on the banks of the Layon, trying very hard not to look like a Swiss lakeside lodge (well, that’s what I think it resembles, although I would not argue with anyone who suggested it was an Austrian railway station). Once one of several estates in the region that was owned and managed by the Tijou family, when Pierre-Yves Tijou fell ill the estate was sold. The owner today is Roger Begûinot, a man who made his millions in the dairy industry, as head of Orlait.
This was in 2007, and in the decade that has since passed the estate has undergone something of a revolution, and today the wines are extraordinarily successful. There are two facets to this revitalisation. First, new investment from Begûinot, who funded an overhaul of château, cellars and vineyards. Second was the arrival of a talented but otherwise unknown young winemaker by the name of Thibaud Boudignon (pictured above). Thibaud’s heart lay with his tiny holding in Savennières, where he has made some superb wines which should be ranked alongside the very best in that appellation, which in my book means Damien Laureau, the Papin family of Château Pierre-Bise and the new-wave wines coming from Emmanuel Ogereau, Domaine aux Moines and Eric Morgat. But his skill was equally applied to the wines of Château Soucherie, which meant that this was also suddenly an estate worth knowing.
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