PASCAL Cuisset’s philosophy is “Enjoy life, make good wine and relax”. Not only does he make very good wine, he’s also succeeded in doing what few independent winemakers in Bergerac have managed – he sells quite a lot of it in the UK.
Two years ago he sold around 30% of all he made to us and he’s set to do almost as well this year.
“If the wine’s good and is at the right price, it will sell,” he says. “There’s no secret.”
The excellent red wine he sells to Waitrose, my wine of the week, is a perfect example. But Pascal’s formula for success doesn’t always apply.
If it did, we might see more of his delicious dry white wine, based on Sauvignon Blanc, which he proudly calls his flagship wine, and his superb sweet Saussignac, which for a number of years graced Sainsbury’s shelves.
While it did, it was the most outstanding bargain for a wine of its style in a UK supermarket.
Unlike most of his neighbours, Pascal is unimpressed by the French notion of terroir, at least in its more limited sense of soil and site.
“Don’t talk about terroir,” he protests. “There’s much more to making good wine than that – the winemaker, the way the vines are trained, the yield and so on. I’d always prefer to drink a good technical wine than one driven by terroir that tastes of mushrooms!”
He espouses a practical, down-to-earth approach to growing grapes and to winemaking, but behind the rhetoric there’s a passionate concern for the environment and for bringing the heart as well as the head into winemaking.
“I’m not a wine scientist,” he tells me. “I’m a cook and I’m always trying to make better wine. I’ve tried everything here.”
In the vineyard, for example, he’s experimented with densities of planting and is even now trying out rather unconventional combinations of rootstock and grafts.
He’s firmly committed to sustainable viticulture and is fascinated by biodynamics, which entails the use of homeopathic treatments and the meticulous observance of the cycle of moons, stars and planets.
“Maybe if I had a smaller estate,” he muses, “I’d do things differently and make a different kind of wine.”
He has around 50 hectares of vines, which is well above the average for Bergerac. He intends to stick with his winning formula and make wine that tastes good but is not so precious and pricey that it should only be sniffed and spoken about in hushed tones by wine aficionados.