Petits châteaux big winners of 2011 vintage

The high performing petits châteaux in Bordeaux could be the biggest winners of the 2011 en primeurs campaign, according to a leading Bordeaux négociant. “It’s a year to seek out the lesser-known properties – I’ll be looking out for the high scoring petits châteaux,” Jean-Christophe Mau of Yvon Mau told the drinks business. Mau believes the role of the négociant in steering consumers towards the best wines of the vintage in terms of quality and value will be more important than ever this year. “The quality is not there across the board like it was in 2009 and 2010,” he admitted.

Despite being in the shadow of 2009 and 2010, Mau doesn’t think it will be harder to shift the 2011 wines: “It all depends on the prices they come out at,” he said, adding, “It will be easier for us to get hold of stock this year as there will be less speculative buyers.” Mau believes the role of the courtier (the middle man between the individual châteaux and the négociants) is becoming “less and less” important. “Only around 10% of courtiers are doing a useful job, the rest are just there to take their 2% from us and sign on the dotted line.

They serve their purpose in helping the petits châteaux find buyers, but the classified growths really don’t need them. It’s a very antiquated system,” he lamented. Mau (right), who splits his time between Yvon Mau and running both Château Brown and Château Preuillac, admitted he was going to be more selective about the châteaux he buys from this year, pinpointing the Médoc as the standout region in terms of quality.

Meanwhile, Bruno Eynard, chief winemaker of Château Lagrange, which hosted the UGC Pauillac, St Julien and St Estephe tasting during primeurs week, was pleasantly surprised at the turnout for this year’s primeurs. “We had over 4,000 people through our doors in three days, which is almost as many as last year’s UGC tasting. He noted a higher proportion of visitors from Europe and the US this year, and less from Asia, along with a “surprisingly high” number of Brazilian visitors.

Eynard revealed that his 2011 crop at Lagrange was down 20% and said it was “ridiculous” to compare 2011 with the quality of both 2009 and 2010, but that producers who got it right made “approachable, easy drinking, balanced wines with finesse.” He described St Julien as the most homogenous of the Bordeaux regions in 2011 and Margaux as the most disparate. In terms of pricing, he warned of the dangers of abusing the good will of consumers with a second year of late releases, predicting the majority of châteaux to have come out with their prices by the second week of May.

Julio Iglesias interview

Julio Iglesias doesn’t do things by half. During his 42-year music career, the Madrid-born singer has sold more than 300 million albums in 14 different languages, making him among the top 10 best-selling musicians in history. Last year, the 66-year-old, who has reportedly slept with over 3,000 women, released album number 77, and he’s currently midway through a world tour – ‘It’s a great excuse to drink wines from different countries every night,’ he says, laughing.

His speech is littered with huge numbers – a million dollars here, 800 million pesetas there, and I quickly get the impression that Iglesias’ world is one in which money is no object. ‘I used to spend more than a million dollars a year on wine,’ he tells me, in a genuinely casual, rather than boastful way. The singer has bought so much wine over the years that he seems to have lost count of how many bottles he has in his three cellars in Spain, Miami and the Dominican Republic.

‘I’ve got about 5,000 top wines and hundreds of thousands of normal wines,’ he admits, without hyperbole. Generous with his plentiful stock, he gives away about 100 cases of wine to friends every year and thinks nothing of cracking open a bottle of Pétrus 1982 after a concert to share with his band. Isn’t it wasted on the uninitiated? ‘Not at all,’ he counters. ‘They’ve all become wine connoisseurs and have built cellars too. The vodka days are over!’

It was in the summer of ’82 that Iglesias tried to buy the acclaimed Ribera del Duero estate Vega Sicilia. ‘I was having dinner with friends in Madrid and it came up in conversation that Vega Sicilia was on the market for 800 million pesetas (around US$6m back then). I got on the phone to them the next morning, but it was too late.’ The winery had already been sold to a Venezuelan family, who went on to sell it to the Alvarez family, the current owners. ‘It wasn’t my lucky day, I guess,’ Iglesias says wistfully.

Vega Sicilia aside, he insists he’s not just a trophy collector – wine has shaped his outlook on life. ‘My understanding of life has become much stronger and clearer through my appreciation of wine,’ he says, describing spending those millions on wine in the ’80s as: ‘the best thing I ever did in my life’. Brought up in Madrid in the '50s by his doctor father, Iglesias got by in the early days by drinking ‘any old stuff from Valdepeñas’. In his late teens he played as a goalkeeper for Real Madrid football club, until a near fatal car accident in 1963 ended his sporting career. During his rehabilitation, to develop dexterity in his hands, he started playing the guitar and subsequently, writing music.

Iglesias’ wine epiphany was equally notable. In 1973 he was invited by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild – a big Iglesias fan – to a dinner party at her home in Paris after one of his concerts. ‘She asked me what I thought of the wine and I told her that I’d never tasted anything like it,’ Iglesias recalls with brio. ‘She summoned the butler to serve a second wine, this time in a decanter, which I later learned was Lafite 1961. It was the first time in my life I’d felt a wine all the way down to my toes. It worked its magic through my body and made me realise that wine had a lot more mystery and history than I had first thought’.

The memory of the Lafite lingered, sending Iglesias on a lifelong wine journey. He began picking up the odd case in the countries he toured in – reds in France, whites in Germany – and got seriously into collecting in 1978, after building a 4,000-bottle cellar in the Miami home he shares with his second wife and their five children. He grew his cellar by seeking out bargains at New York merchant Sherry Lehmann. ‘In the late ’70s you could still get hold of great 1947s and 1961s. The ’75s were coming onto the market and I started spending a lot of money on Bordeaux, buying up all the Pauillac, Pomerol, Graves and Margaux I could get my hands on. Before you can appreciate great Burgundy, you’ve got to cut your teeth on good Bordeaux’.

Outside of France, Iglesias collects Spanish icon wines from Rioja and Ribera del Duero, particularly (perhaps still longingly) Vega Sicilia, as well as Pesquera, Pingus and CVNE Imperial. ‘I’ve recently got much more interested in Spanish wines’, he tells me. ‘I love trying wines from lesser-known Spanish regions like Calatayud, Jumilla and Zamora’. He dips his toe in the New World via Australia, South Africa, California and Argentina, but his wine heartland is very much Bordeaux and Burgundy. ‘My latest obsession is Pinot Noir,’ he tells me excitedly. ‘Romanée-Conti from a good year is absolutely unforgettable. When made well it’s so approachable young. You don’t have to wait for it, which is great, because I don’t have too much time.'

Article originally published in Decanter magazine

Château Pontet-Canet

Pontet-canet is one of Bordeaux’s recent success stories – a poster child for change in the region. Thriving from recent refurbishment, investment and innovations, its star is fixed firmly in the ascendancy, and with opening prices for the 2009 vintage released at double that of 2005, it seems the only way is up. Founded by Jean-François de Pontet, governor general of the Médoc and secretary to King Louis XV, the château was bought from Bordeaux winemaking dynasty the Cruse family in 1975 by Cognac merchant Guy Tesseron. Full time management of the property was taken over by Guy’s son Alfred in 1994.

With Alfred at the helm, Pontet-Canet has grown steadily in quality each year. And with the rapturous reception given to the 2009 vintage, it earned its stripes as a member of the elite club of over-achieving non-first-growth châteaux alongside Cos d’Estournel and Palmer. Pontet-Canet’s swathe of vineyards reside in a prime position on the plateau of Pauillac, north-west of the town, and due south of illustrious neighbours Château Lafite and Château Mouton Rothschild. The 81-hectare estate’s gravel over clay and limestone soils are planted with a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon – roughly two-thirds – and Merlot, with a sprinkling of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

This January, the estate was re-awarded full Biodyvin biodynamic certification, having lost it in 2007 when a severe bout of mildew threatened the entire crop, forcing Tesseron to use chemicals to treat it – a decision he now says he regrets. The loss of certification was a huge blow, but signalled an important change. “2007 was a learning curve. We lost crops but the wine was good and people began to realise there may be a price to pay for higher quality. 2008 was just as bad, but we managed because we were prepared. With biodynamics, it’s more about prevention than cure when it comes to treatments,” says Tesseron.

His appointment of Jean-Michel Comme as technical director in 1989 brought about a period of change for the estate. The pair reintroduced green harvesting – without Guy’s knowledge – in 1990. Together with Comme and famed Bordeaux consultant Michel Rolland, Tesseron, 63, has taken Pontet-Canet from good-value over-performer to super-second challenger. Pontet-Canet is the first and only Bordeaux classed growth thus far to be certified biodynamic. The process began in 2004, a year after Tesseron stopped using herbicides. Testing the water with just 14ha of the vineyard, in 2005 they expanded the practices to the whole estate, signalling an incredible shift in philosophy.

“In the end, you have to decide if you’re going to stand still or improve, and what I saw at Champs des Treilles was the turning point,” says Tesseron of Comme’s 25-acre organic estate. “I said to Jean-Michel: ‘If you think you can do it, let’s try’.” Tesseron replaced the stainless steel tanks in the cellar with small conical concrete vats that are gravity-filled for gentler tannin management, giving much softer extraction and the best vinification for each individual plot. In 2008, three Breton horses were brought in to plough 8ha of vineyard in place of tractors. Today the ploughing and spraying has been extended to 24ha.

The long-term aim is to get rid of the tractors altogether and bring in more horses – used at the château in the ‘60s – to work the entire estate. In January, a fourth horse, Surprise, joined the château and is currently being trained alongside the other three. “Our aim is to use horses as much as we can. It’s early days, but we’re taking slow steps. Working biodynamically is a holistic approach. It’s constant, everyday work that puts us in close touch with the vineyard.

Our first motivation is to create the best wines possible, but we also know that biodynamics is the purest way of respecting the environment,” says Tesseron. Lower yields are offset by increased grape quality, which leads to a higher proportion of first-label wines. “Pontet-Canet is not a potato patch; I need sufficient yield and quality,” says Comme, who argues that the same model works for less prestigious estates. “I don’t live in a Grand Cru Classé bubble – I have a little vineyard myself,” Comme says, referring to Château du Champs des Treilles, run by his wife Corinne, who also consults with first growth Sauternes Château Climens in their conversion to biodynamics.

Pontet-Canet doesn’t make a fuss about being biodynamic – no mention of its re-certification will appear on the 2010 labels. “A certification on the label is not important to us. What is important is the name Château Pontet-Canet, and how the wine makes you feel,” says Tesseron. Attitudes towards biodymamics in Bordeaux remain sceptical, but for Pontet-Canet, it’s a way of life, rather than a marketing tool. “There are still people who don’t believe it’s possible to be organic in Bordeaux,” says Comme. “As soon as the whole estate was biodynamic, we aimed for certification as a way to prove we were sincere in our project.”

Pontet-Canet has ploughed a green path in Bordeaux, and proved that biodynamics is possible in the region. It will be exciting to see which châteaux jump on the biodynamic bandwagon and follow suit.

First Growths masterclass

Wine and the City goes behind the scenes at the Decanter First Growths masterclass on Saturday at The Landmark hotel. A first for Decanter (and for the UK), this was only the second time in history that directors from all five Bordeaux First Growths: Lafite, Latour, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild and Haut-Brion, have gathered together to taste their iconic wines in public. Find out what vintages the lucky ticket holders tasted here...