Didier Dagueneau, 52, maker of Pouilly-Fumé wines, dies
Didier Dagueneau, an iconoclastic Loire Valley winemaker whose Pouilly-Fumes displayed a purity and subtlety far beyond most other sauvignon blanc wines, died Wednesday in a plane crash.
He died when the ultralight plane he was piloting crashed after takeoff in the Dordogne region of France, said his New York importer, Joe Dressner.
Dagueneau was 52 and lived in St.-Andelain, a village in the Pouilly-Fume region on the eastern end of the Loire Valley.
Working with sauvignon blanc, a grape that made crowd-pleasing, thirst-quenching Pouilly-Fumes and Sancerres but was rarely taken seriously, Dagueneau sought to show its potential for greatness.
"He influenced the entire region," said Jacqueline Friedrich, a wine writer who is working on a revision of her 1996 book, "A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire." "I've been tasting a lot of Sancerres, and I'm absolutely amazed by the evolution and how much better they've become. That was absolutely his doing." |
