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Bordeaux Producers
Name: Bordeaux
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Originally a Benedictine foundation but owned by the legendary Alexis Lichine for nearly forty years and by his son for another ten, Prieure-Lichine has always had a good reputation for its wine. For those many years, it produced wines that were typical of the Margaux appellation, without necessarily being the most exciting. The Ballande group, a family with many interests in the wine business, and their director Justin Onclin are looking to change this.
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The fall and rise of a great Margaux is in this case measured over a nearly 140 year period. In the 1855 classification Rauzan-Segla was ranked in the top ten of Bordeaux properties but in the 20th century in particular suffered from a succession of poor owners ranging from the lazy and complacent to the downright crooked. 1994 was the turning point when it was bought by Chanel, who poached John Kolasa from Chateau Latour and installed him as cellarmaster. Immediately out went machine harvesting and archaic manual cellar practices.
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Now biodynamic, Chateau Senejac has gone from being a lightish luncheon claret to a lower yielding, deeper and fuller wine that much better demonstrates its inland terroir and the high proportion of the Cabernet grapes here. The improvements wrought by Alfred Tesseron and the team from cult Chateau Pontet-Canet have really changed the vineyard and therefore the wines for the better and for pure drinking pleasure this is a buy.
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Siran has been in the Miailhe family for over 150 years and has a distinct grape mix, with high proportions of both Merlot and Petit Verdot and less than half Cabernet Sauvignon. This gives the wine real stuffing, moderated these days by a relatively short spell of just over a year in oak, 40% new, in order to allow the purity and finesse of the wine through. Arguably 2004 was a turning point for the property, when Denis Dubourdieu was appointed as the consultant and quality has improved from an already high level since then. /CW 20/05/10
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When Jean Gautreau bought Sociando-Mallet in 1969 he must have been affected by the romance of the summer of love and the `evenements` at the time, for the property had little in its favour but potential. Ant that`s potential in an estate agent sense. The area down to vines was a rump of the land and the buildings were virtual wrecks. There has been no hint of any of that for years and years now and Sociando even withdrew from the revised Cru Bourgeois system in 2003, such is the confidence in the stature of the property and its wine.
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One almost expects each bottle to be packed with a cashmere cardigan thrown over its shoulders, so dapper is proprietor Stephan von Neipperg. Purchased by his family in 1991, it really started to show its class in 1995. 90% Merlot, it sits in cold clay soils on a slightly sloping clay limestone part of the plateau. The processes here throughout are as meticulous as one might expect, with hand picking and the fruit sorted both before and after the destemmer. 80% new oak is used in the cellar and the wine is neither fined nor filtered.
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Now you see it, now you don`t. Vineyard or pine plantation? However since the late 1860s this has been a wine estate and in both red and white wines a hugely successful one. There is one fly in the ointment though, like Volnay and Pommard, their particular micro-climate seems to attract incredibly localised hailstorms. Not desirable. Otherwise the estate fashions its highly praised wines from, for the reds, a 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc mix, though obviously the proportions vary from vintage to vintage. -
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Today, Le Pin is such a well-established member of the pantheon of the world’s greatest wines, it’s interesting to recall that it wasn’t always thus. Under its previous owner, a Mme F Loubie, the wine had been blended with lesser wines and sold exclusively in Belgium as Clos du Pin. Mme Loubie wanted to sell it to Leon Thienpont so that he could join it with Vieux Chateau Certan but, with six children to support, there was no way Leon could afford it. In 1978, Mme Loubie died.
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The Cotes de Castillon lies on the eastward extension of the plateau underpinning St-Emilion. The soils in the area are mixed, but the high concentration of clay and limestone around what was then called Chateau Goubau caught the eye of none other than Jacques Thienpont, owner of Le Pin and L’If. ‘These soils keeps the roots of the vines cool, so the wines are fresh,’ says Jacques. When Chateau Goubau came up for sale, Jacques and his sister Anne de Raeymaeker pounced, and purchased it. Their first vintage was 2016. He named it L`Hetre, continuing his `family tree` motif.
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In 2010, Jacques Thienpont, the owner of Le Pin (the ultimate small estate with a big reputation) set out on a new venture, in St-Emilion. He acquired a small property called Chateau Haut-Plantey and set about re-building it from the bottom up. The soils had been treated with weedkiller and needed to be nurtured back to life. He uprooted the vines in three of the original five hectares, and replanted. He was able to acquire a couple of other plots to add in, which he thought would bring complementary qualities.
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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. -
In 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)
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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.
