"'Return to the old ways, it will be progress' is a phrase contained in a very famous letter that Verdi sent to Francesco Florimo on January 5, 1871, in response to an invitation to succeed Mercadante as the head of the Naples Conservatory. This phrase could have been spoken yesterday evening by Cyril Chirouze, the new director of operations at Clos Rougeard, on the occasion of the inauguration of the new winemaking and aging buildings of Clos Rougeard's wines. Just as well, Martin Bouygues, the new owner, could have adopted this maxim of the famous musician, so much was the deference towards the Foucault brothers (the owners up to then for 8 generations) emphasized, solemn, and let's say it, authentic. However, it is another quote that was chosen, more local, and to tell the truth, more accurate, because the event that gathered us yesterday was not a simple handover, but the completion of the renovation work of the building housing the most famous cellars of the Saumurois.
This quote, we have obviously forgotten it, so much the evening was full of beautiful bottles to taste, starting with those of the dinner, Brézé 2019 and Poyeux 2009 among others. The 2017 vintage, currently on the market, was also presented for tasting. Let's remember a superb Brézé, a very good Bourg, and a most flattering Poyeux. It was an opportunity for us to compare them with the 2022s produced by the new team and tasted in barrels. At first glance, with all the usual caution at this stage of aging, nothing changes, except for the feeling of affirmed continuity, almost zealous, with perhaps that additional Cistercian precision (Cyril Chirouze is from Burgundy...) in the expression, in the definition of the wines textures, so fine already in the time of the Foucaults, which delights the most delicate palates.
So if this famous quote has escaped us, we found another one, whose wisdom quite rightly sums up the way in which the Clos should, it seems to us, evolve in the future: 'Tradition without modernity is sterile, but modernity without tradition is blind.' André Valadier, farmer and politician from Aubrac."
La Tulipe Rouge