Although I have visited Pierre-Jacques on several occasions over the past 20 years or so, I have never had to find my own way there. Finding the street (Rue de la Croix Rouge) in Benais is not difficult but finding No 7 is quite another matter. Initially we were encouraged by the official sign at the beginning of the road indicating that P J Druet was ahead of us. Despite driving slowly down the road there appeared to be no sign either for PJ or No 7. Furthermore the street numbers appeared to be haphazardly scattered – certainly not in numerical order. Some two kilometres down the road we turned round and asked directions. Driving slowly back we still missed PJs chai and it wasn’t until our second slow sweep along la Croix Rouge that Sarah (not called The Wine Detective for nothing) spotted PJ’s tatty, modest and discreet sign (see above) wired to a railing.
By the time Sarah and I found the Druet chai and located PJ it was 10am. We had hoped to start the visit at 9.30. Thanks to the now completed A85 motorway it had taken us just under an hour to get across from Epeigné-les-Bois in the Cher Valley. The final stretch of the A85, from near Tours to Saint-Aignan, opened in December 2007. With the opening of the A11 by-pass of Angers in the summer of 2008, the Loire’s motorway system is now complete, at least until a second autoroute is built round Tours. The A85 has made a huge difference to travelling up and down the Loire and the Cher Valleys. Previously the journey was very slow and on a very dangerous road – the N76.
Unlike many Loire producers PJ had no family vineyards to inherit and provide a launching pad. Pierre-Jacques comes from Chissay in the Cher Valley, four kilometres east of Montrichard. He started his wine career as an oenologist before deciding to establish his own domaine in Bourgueil in 1980. Although curiously François Chidaine, a leading producer in Montlouis, believes that there is a big untapped potential in that part of the Cher – Chissay, Montrichard and Bourrée, trying to establish a serious estate in Chissay then would not have been an option – it is still not easy.
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“2008 has been a difficult year so far,” said PJ. “Some frost damage in early April, attacks of mildew and oidium and a difficult flowering in June. But September makes the wine here.” PJ pointed out his special conical vats, which he designed many years ago. “They are the same shape and size as the best oak fermenting vats,” he explained. There is a pigeage system on the top of the vat – pigeage replicates pushing down the cap of skins and pips into the wine – something traditionally done by human feet.