Daniel and Florence Cathiard`s wines have reached new heights in recent years as the couple have pushed through change and renovations in the vineyards and now have a fully functioning new winery for the second wine - Les Hauts de Smith. Not only is this fully equipped for producing high quality wine in small plot-based parcels as slowly as necessary, but is carbon neutral, even to the extent of capturing the carbon dioxide from the fermentation process.
Bordeaux
Bordeaux
An enormous region producing large amounts of quality wine that was once the most favoured in these islands. Now, the top 3% of producers are the most privileged in the world, while the rest, as the market has expanded, have somewhat ironically lost market share to the sweetened fruit juice imported from other parts of the world. Affinity with Bordeaux partly stems from our historical ownership of it, while the Scots started drinking it to support later French owners in their wars against the English.
- Tronquoy-LalandeIn a sense Bordeaux is like the Football League, where the arrival of a wealthy owner combined with bringing a retired superstar manager out of retirement can transform the fortunes of an estate. So it is here, as the Bouygues (think Ch Montrose) squillions combine happily with the skills and subtlety of Jean-Bernard Delmas – late of Haut-Brion to make the most of the fantastic gravel soils. This is a property where the Merlot and Petit Verdot have formed a majority coalition, keeping the Cabernet Sauvignon in a minority and the result is a wine of depth and finesse. (CW 21/05/10)
- Vieux Chateau Certan
After Petrus, perhaps no other Pomerol property attracts so much reverence as Vieux Chateau Certan. It certainly has an enviable location, plum in the heart of Pomerol and surrounded by the greatest names of the appellation. And the name of VCC itself? Certan was once Sertan, and may derive from a Portuguese word for desert; Portuguese travellers are said to have so named the area when they passed through in the Middle Ages. And there certainly is an old chateau on the estate.
