Didier Dagueneau (1956 – 17 September 2008) was a winemaker in the Loire Valley who received a cult following for his

Sauvignon blanc is a green-skinned grape variety that originates from the Bordeaux region of France. The grape most likely gets its name from the French words ''sauvage'' ("wild") and ''blanc'' ("white") due to its early origins as an indigenous grape in ...

wines from the

Pouilly Fumé Pouilly may refer to: * Pouilly, Moselle, a commune in the Moselle department, France * Pouilly, Oise, a commune in the Oise department, France It can also refer to * Pouilly-sur-Loire, a commune in the Nièvre department in central France ** Po ...

appellation. He died on 17 September 2008, in an ultralight plane crash in the Cognac region of France. He is survived by two children with his ex-wife Martine, Benjamin and Charlotte, who work at the domaine, and two children with his partner Suzan Cremer, Aaron and Léon.

Winemaking

Dagueneau was born in 1956 in

Saint-Andelain Saint-Andelain () is a commune in the Nièvre department in central France. It lies just a couple of km east of Pouilly-sur-Loire, famous for the wine known as Pouilly-Fumé. Saint-Andelain sits on a hilltop and is surrounded by vineyards that ...

Nièvre Nièvre () is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, central-east France. Named after the river Nièvre, it had a population of 204,452 in 2019.Burgundy Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...

. His winery with of vineyards was in the town of Saint-Andelain, in Pouilly Fumé. He was seeking to make "the best Sauvignon blanc in the world". He made a variety of different cuveés, including Buisson-Renard, Pur Sang (French for "pureblood"), Asteroïde, and Silex ("

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

"). Somewhat unusually for the appellation and grape variety, many of his wines were meant for cellaring and some had a clear influence of

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

. He was also developing vineyards in Jurançon. An ex-motorcycle racer with no formal enological training Dagueneau clashed with other winegrowers about ''"typicité"'' ("

typicity Typicity (French ''typicité'', Italian ''tipicità'') is a term in wine tasting used to describe the degree to which a wine reflects its varietal origins and thus demonstrates the signature characteristics of the grape from which it was produced, e ...

" or "showing its origin") while achieving unprecedented prices for the region. His vineyard practices were a combination of the exacting (extremely low yields, hand harvesting in multiple passes) with the unusual, such as using horses to plow the soil between vines. He was described as a risk taker and an experimenter, with perfectionist attitudes to his work, cutting yields severely to achieve greater ripeness.

References

* ;Footnotes {{DEFAULTSORT:Dagueneau, Didier 1956 births 2008 deaths French winemakers Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in France