Domaine Didier Dagueneau has 12 hectares (30 acres) of vineyards, and is located in the town of Saint-Andelain, in Pouilly Fumé. Didier 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”). Somewhat unusually for the appellation and grape variety, many of his wines were meant for cellaring and some had a clear influence of oak. He was also developing vineyards in Jurançon.
An ex-motorcycle racer with no formal enological training Dagueneau clashed with other winegrowers about “typicité” (“typicity” 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.
