This estate, today with Arnaud Mortet at the helm, makes some of Gevrey-Chambertin’s finest wines. Working with 16 hectares, as well as a few négociant parcels, this property makes perfumed and chiselled Pinot Noir.

Domaine Denis Mortet (bottles)

Discover the top Burgundy Pinot Noir from Domaine Denis Mortet, who makes some of the best wines in Gevrey-Chambertin

Domaine Denis Mortet wines, Burgundy 

More about Domaine Denis Mortet

Domaine Denis Mortet 

The grey horse stretches its neck out towards me, curling its lip towards my outreached palm, before nuzzling my pocket, in search perhaps of a potential snack. Its head is the size of my torso, its hooves the size of my head, with the entire beautiful beast weighing circa one ton, I’m told. You can sense the power of its immense muscled mass. Nearby, Adelaide Bonnefond, a petite 20-something is calling to the rest of her troupe of friendly giants. Balthazar – the aforementioned grey – is “a real lazybones”, Baudoin can be a bit fast and over-eager, while Olive is a horse of remarkable patience. “Each one has its own character,” Bonnefond says.  We’re in a field a stone’s throw from Ch. Pontet-Canet, where the property’s 10 horses spend their weekends and holidays. This Pauillac Fifth Growth is one of a handful of estates around the region, and indeed the world, that has returned to using horses in the vineyard – in lieu of modern machinery. Unusually, they have brought this operation in house – with their own stables and a five-strong team dedicated to grooming, handling and working the horses, led by Bonnefond.  “I have no idea,” says Mathieu Bessonet – the property’s Technical Director – when I ask how much it adds to their bills. “It’s not important for us… it’s a philosophy.” Herbicides were banned long ago at the estate, and they’ve been farming organically since 2004, certified organic and biodynamic from 2010 (the first Classed Growth to achieve the latter), with horses first introduced in 2008. They’re just one form of livestock you’ll find on the property. When I arrive, a drift of pigs is penned on the front lawn, tasked with munching on the invasive weed, common couch or quackgrass – but there are cattle and donkeys too. Collectively, they consume 60 tons of hay, three tons of barley and 600 kilos of lucerne (organic, of course) – much of which will end up back between the vines.  “A lot of money goes into taking good care of this place – what is in fact our tool for production,” says Bessonet. “The property is over 300 years old, so we’re just passing through. If I spend 20 years here, it’s a long time – but it’s only 3% of the history of Pontet-Canet. We have to take care of this place to be able to pass it on.” And working with horses is just one way in which they aim to do this, reducing soil compaction, allowing water, air and microbes to move through the soil. They can be more precise with their work and – most importantly – break fewer vines. A stunning number of vines are knocked out of place by tractors, something that is considered a natural consequence of modern farming – but not one that this estate is willing to accept.  “Wine, it’s made by the roots of the vines,” says Bessonet. As vines age, their roots creep further down into the soil and Pontet-Canet has some of the oldest vineyards in the Médoc, averaging 55 years in age. And it is the age of their vines, Bessonet feels, that “allows us to express the terroir”, as well as tempering climatic extremes (a growing concern with climate change). While it wasn’t a key reason for the shift back in 2008, using horses also allows them to reduce their carbon footprint – both by using fewer fossil fuels and increasing the carbon-holding capacity of their vineyards, something that is at the forefront of producers’ minds today.  The switch from tractor to horse has changed the way they farm more than can be measured in analytical results, however. “They are not little machines; working the vines with horses, we really become one with the vines,” says Bonnefond. The way you interact with an animal versus a machine is totally different, and she feels that as a result they are much more reactive, more aware of their work and able to stop at any moment. And, as Bessonet notes, even those that have worked at the property for 10 or 15 years can’t help but smile when the horses pass by. As any good manager knows, a happy team will pay endless dividends.  Back in 2008, they started with just two horses, but that number has grown to 10 today. They have a combination of breeds – Percheron and Comtois largely today, although they’ve had Bretons in the past. Percherons are larger, and they’ve been moving more towards Comtois, favouring the slightly smaller and even more gentle breed that hails from the Jura. All are draft horses, historically used in war and agriculture – weighing around double that of the daintier breeds you might see eventing or show-jumping.  Bessonet’s grandmother was, he tells me, almost insulted when he told her they were using horses – seeing it as a step backwards; but, as he and Bonnefond explain, the work is totally different to that of generations past. They might not be powered by electricity, but modern technology and know-how is being used to refine the way they work and the implements they use. Over the years, they’ve developed lots of tools themselves, and worked with a local business to craft others – a slow process that can only be tackled by those with a truly long-term vision.  They buy horses when they’re around three or four years old, so they’ve been broken in and have started their training but can be finished and finessed in-house (“They know the commands, but they’re still young so don’t necessarily listen,” explains Bessonet. “They’re teenagers!”). They’re unsurprisingly picky about the breeders they work with, and ensuring that the training received in their formative years is up to scratch. By the time the process is finished, the moment the plough touches the trunk of a vine, a horse will know to stop instantly, not even needing a human command, avoiding any significant damage. They have a mini faux vineyard with a handful of short rows lined with posts (but no vines) on the estate, a sort of school where they can train younger horses and use at the start of the season, spending half a day so the animals can get back to the pace of work.  Monday to Friday, the horses are at work, stabled next to the winery (with stalls crafted from old barrels). Each horse will work for half a day (sometimes longer if the tools they’re pulling are sufficiently light), before being walked back to the stables to allow for active recovery – evacuating lactic acid in their legs, something that is essential to maintain their health. With the time to groom, harness and unharness, wash down, muck out and feed the horses, each will work around three hours or so a day. Bonnefond’s team will take one horse out in the morning, before going back out with a different one in the afternoon. Alongside their work, the horses are lunged (moved in a circle around a handler, on a long lead rein) – working both on commands and their flexibility. “To change their minds too, seeing something other than the vines” explains Bonnefond.  There are around 10 passes per row a year, four or five to work the soils and around five others – spraying to protect pruning wounds (to prevent grapevine trunk diseases), making holes for planting new vines, spraying horsetail to control mildew pressure, as well as the 500 and 501 preparations (biodynamic sprays). Today, around half of the property’s 81 hectares is worked by horse – and the team is always working to do more, but Bessonet is unsure if 100% is a realistic goal. Copper sulphate – the main spray used in organic and biodynamic viticulture – is spread by tractor, not being something they’d want to expose the horses to (nor put gas masks on them, as was done during the Second World War).   The work is, inevitably, seasonal – and they’re turned out to pasture at weekends and during quiet periods, with lunging to keep them sharp. As soon as véraison takes place (the grapes changing in colour from green to red), “It’s holiday time for the horses,” says Bonnefond, laughing. At that point the grapes become too fragile and could be knocked by the horses, breaking the skins and damaging the fruit.   All being well, the horses work until they’re 18 or 20 years in age, and then Pontet-Canet finds them a home to live out their old age. Retirement can, in fact, be the hardest stage for these work-horses, explains Bonnefond. “They’re used to seeing everyone every day,” she says. One horse, Turbo, kept waiting at the gates, ready to go to work, for well over a month after he’d left the estate, struggling to adapt to his new, restful way of life.  Bonnefond had never worked in agriculture before arriving at Pontet-Canet, having been at an equestrian centre, and her team has similarly varied backgrounds (one used to train trotters and one worked with circus horses, for example). They’ve each got their favourites in Pontet-Canet’s herd, she confesses (hers is a handsome bay who is especially energetic), but they all work with each of the horses, to keep it interesting for the animals, and so that no horse gets too used to any particular handler.  It's certainly not light work – for Bonnefond and her team at least. Days are long and the work is physically demanding, but seeing Bonnefond in the field with the horses, her dainty frame at odds with the gigantic draft horses surrounding her, it’s clear that she loves it. Having a team like this in-house is something few estates can afford, but it’s reflective – as Bessonet says – of the philosophy at Pontet-Canet. Their special band of gravel terrace in the Médoc, shared with the likes of Mouton Rothschild, Lafite Rothschild and Cos d’Estournel – properties that represent the pinnacle of Cabernet Sauvignon around the world, deserves to be protected and preserved in every way possible.  Explore all current listings of Pontet-Canet or read more about Bordeaux  

Behind the winery at Ch. Pontet-Canet, you’ll find a row of stables. In the first of our series taking you behind the scenes in Bordeaux, we dive into how the beautiful draft horses that live here are key to the philosophy at the leading Pauillac estate

Horses are key to the philosophy at leading Bordeaux wine estate Pontet-Canet: we caught up with the team in Pauillac to find out more

Taking the reins at Ch. Pontet-Canet

The 2020 vintage was challenging for most vignerons. But for the Durantou family, it was a year that demanded everything of them. Denis Durantou – patriarch and leading light of Pomerol – passed away on 12th May. For many people, their day-job would be the last thing on their minds. But for the Durantous, they threw themselves into work, into the vines.  “Dad passed away right in the middle of the pouring rain in spring," Noëmie Durantou 
Reilhac, Denis’s daughter – who has taken over running the estate – explains. “… Working is our way to deal with things.” With the rain, there was immense mildew pressure and risk to their crop – they had to go on, getting into the vineyard to spray and protect their fruit. Her voice unsurprisingly thick with emotion, she tells me how it was a way to be close to her father – in amongst the vines that he so loved.   Denis Durantou was first and foremost a vigneron – an increasingly rare breed in the polished world of Bordeaux. While Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet had been in the Durantou family for generations, it was leased out to Pierre Lasserre of neighbouring Clos René for over 40 years. Denis arrived in 1982, fully taking over the property a year later, and transforming the then rustic estate into one of the region’s most respected.   The 1998 vintage was pivotal – putting the property, and the talents of Denis Durantou, firmly on the map. While the wines earned high scores (and even higher prices), Denis remained grounded. He continued to run the show, staying just as involved in the day-to-day work; walking the vines and making the wine, getting dirt under his fingernails.  As the reputation of l’Eglise-Clinet soared, he became committed to producing more affordable, “everyday” wines. He acquired Ch. les Cruzelles (in Lalande-de-Pomerol in 2000) and Montlandrie (in the Côtes de Castillon in 2009), while also leasing vines in Saint-Emilion at Saintayme (from 2012). These “lesser” wines might not have been the reason for his fame, but they have long been an insider choice – offering stunning value. Each of his wines was made with precision, finesse and elegance – but he constantly questioned his decisions and sought to do better.  While Denis himself may have passed away, his passion and philosophy lives on. There was something very salt-of-the-earth about the way that Noëmie tells me: “When you have no choice, you have to take action.” The family – Denis’s widow and artist Marie Reilhac, and his three daughters, Alix, Constance and Noëmie – pulled together, dedicating themselves to crafting wines worthy of Denis’s legacy. Not – of course – that they’d take any of the credit.  “We can thank the vines,” Noëmie tells me. “They are living beings and we ask them to go through a lot.” Explaining the unusually extreme conditions of 2020, she says: “If you were drinking a gallon of water every hour for a month, and then no water for two months…”  The vintage kept them on their toes, but for Noëmie it was a fascinating and exciting year, one she saw as an opportunity to learn more than ever. While the property’s style is always elegant, with careful extraction and cool fermentations (never over 25 or 26˚C), this year that was particularly crucial because of the thick skins and ripeness of the fruit. “I like this idea that the vines had gone through so much, [we] had to treat [them] with delicacy,” Noëmie explains.  As for the wines, she’s pleased – and thinks they’ll be even better in six months’ time when they’ve finished élevage. She describes them as very fruity and juicy, but like “a flower garden in the rain”. For her, élevage was of particular importance this year – a risk that it could have been “very charming, very seductive, but not as deep as it could be”. Time in barrel, however, has brought depth to the year’s “flashy fruit”.   The emphasis chez Durantou is on purity of fruit, and expressing each property’s respective site. The barrels used are key: they have always been very loyal to Darnajou. Denis conducted many trials over the years, and the aim is to bring texture – rather than flavour – to the wine with oak. “We want the pure flavour of the bunches of the vines,” Noëmie says. This is why their barrels are double-toasted, to avoid a vanillin character. They find Darnajou lends “sucrosity” – but it’s not wooden or too smoky, something they want to avoid. They use a tiny percentage of Taransaud as well – barrels that are “much more exotic and vanilla-like” – but only want a touch, as this intensity can easily overpower the wine.   Our conversation drifts into white Bordeaux – prompting a twinkle in her eye. “I’m a huge admirer of white winemakers – it’s so technical, you have basically 48 hours. With red wine, you have this little margin to adjust…” So can we look forward to white wines joining the Durantou portfolio? “I would love to – but I have a lot on my plate right now,” she says, laughing. “It might not be for another decade, definitely. First, I want to make sure things go well here.”  Heading up the team, working with Olivier Gautrat (who worked with Denis for 20 years), there’s certainly a lot for Noëmie to tackle – including the current replanting of plots used for La Petite Eglise, l’Eglise-Clinet’s second wine. But she’s not doing it alone – along with her mother, sisters and the rest of the team (“I have an amazing team – I loved working with them,” Noëmie gushes to me).   If the 2020s are any indication, there are no concerns about Denis’s legacy. These are stunning wines, with an aromatic finesse that belies the warmth of the year. Delicate florals are complemented by a glorious weight of fruit, fine but structured tannins, and yet also great freshness.   Only in her 20s, Noëmie is clearly talented – and her love of the vine shines through. Talking to her is energising, her joy infectious – but what is apparent is how she empathises with her vines. She might look fashionable in a tan leather jacket on our call, but you can feel that she’d sooner throw it off to get her hands dirty. She’s not just a winemaker, but a sensitive farmer. While I never had the privilege of meeting her father, I can only imagine he’d be incredibly proud.  Find out more about Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet or read more Editorial

Having taken over from her late father, Denis Durantou, Noëmie Durantou Reilhac of Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet tells Sophie Thorpe how the vines were a constant in an emotionally wrought year – and what lies ahead for the vigneron family 

Noëmie Durantou Reilhac of Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet on how the vines were a constant in an emotionally wrought year – and what lies ahead for the vigneron family 

Ch.’Eglise Clinet's constant farmer

The constant farmer: Noëmie Durantou Reilhac

Wine, though the most intimate of pleasures, lends itself to the most expansive of texts. We drink wine most often – tastings aside – in pairings of two, or in lonesome but agreeable solitude, and, its narcotic pleasure being felt internally, we feel its effects as we feel a fever: almost secretly, in shivers. Though wine is like sex in its intimacy, unlike sex, the form in which we fetishise wine – our vine erotica – is not hushed and illicit but encyclopedic. On the shelves of any wine drinker, there are likely to be catalogues, dictionaries organised by region, old Parker buying guides some 600 pages long that somehow, though dated, can’t be discarded.  Wine seems singular among human pleasures in this. We don’t, as a rule, rush from reading a poem to great anthologies of poetry, or add to the savour of seeing a play by reading a big atlas of dramatic literature – not, at least, after we graduate from school. Sports fans, it’s true, like big books of statistics, but then sports-watching is a social act in the first instance – the more people in the stands, the merrier the occasion. With wine, we like the macro with our micro: with a solitary glass in hand, we look, in print, over the next hill, or the current vintage, at the vineyard across the way, or the vintage yet to come. It’s part of the pleasure the glass provides. The reasons for this micro and macro turn are, on reflection, commercial and artisanal as much as aesthetic. The business of wine needs a big picture of its domain, its resources, and its potential market – scale sets the stage for commerce. The makers of wine like to place themselves on a broader map of where wine is and what it’s made with. The great Bordeaux classification of 1855 is not just the noblest public monument to a beverage ever attempted, but a model of market-making and even market price-fixing. Once a hierarchy of growths has been established, it is easy to slot in the price tags. But there is a truth of taste beneath the ordering of value. With wine, we know that what we are experiencing is, however singular, still an intersection of opposed forces – as the peerless wine writer Jancis Robinson MW says of her first glass of Chambolle-Musigny 1959; “I knew at once that there was something in the glass that was sensually delicious but that it was also made, produced, and therefore suggested a history of intellect and discernment.” The pleasure of wine is the crossing of a place, a grape and a people; and so, we turn to the big books to frame the small pleasures.  What distinguishes wine from even a good glass of ale or a local brew is the specificity of the pleasure set against the scale of the system that made it – one that historically embraces the planet. It’s a First Growth, or a domaine Burgundy, or a Ridge Zinfandel or a New Zealand Pinot Noir made to a Burgundy model by American wine makers … the more we know, the more we’re free to feel. Most sensory pleasures are specific to the point of being illicit – aside from the bemused fetishist, romance is a spontaneous pleasure, often aided, to be sure, by a systematic wine. Wine is premeditated; we choose a bottle, let it ripen, and break it open. Even casual table drinking has a tale to tell, a journey to trace on a map. These thoughts are brought to mind in contemplation of Wine Grapes, the monosyllabically titled but unprecedentedly expansive dictionary of grape varieties grown to be crushed and fermented on this green planet. Authored by Robinson, along with Julia Harding MW and the geneticist Dr José Vouillamoz, it marks an epoch – several epochs – in our understanding of wine, from both a professional planet-straddling and an amateur glass-in-hand perspective. A book of its time (published in 2012), it was made possible, in part, by a revolution in the DNA analysis of wine grapes to help discover their origins and histories.  The DNA profiling of wine grapes only began in 1993, and the first ‘paternity test’ successfully concluded in 1997 – a mere few days ago by historical perspective – with specialists, Dr Vouillamoz among them, drawing astonishing Darwinian lines among seemingly unrelated grapes. Zinfandel, it has been discovered in the last 40 years, is not only the Siamese twin of Primitivo, but its Croatian Siamese twin. In proper Darwinian fashion, the book tells us, “It looks increasingly as though an enormous proportion of the grapes we know today are members of a few key families.”  The leading families of wine, Pinot and Nebbiolo and the rest, like the leading houses of Westeros, jostle and engage in incestuous inter-breeding as they move towards dominance. As Jancis Robinson admits, the quest for the origins of grapes can become surprisingly emotional. “The Zin quest is so … heated. There was a Zinfandel conference in Croatia, with all the great Zin makers, even Joel ‘King of Zin’ Peterson from Ravenswood, and we all had to present our various things about Zinfandel. There was a small cohort of people from Montenegro who reckoned that their variety – whose name is unpronounceable – was the true progenitor of modern Zinfandel, not the Croatian one. It became so … Balkan! And you know what? They may be right!” Wine Grapes is of its time in another sense as well, marking the moment when we have started to think of wine not solely in terms of region, but much more in terms of variety, with the semi-mystical term ‘terroir’ acting as a kind of Holy Spirit between them. Thinking ‘grape’ more than ‘place’ releases our imaginations. The wholesome instructive pleasures of the book, to which we’ll come, shrink beside the unwholesome, guilty pleasures of turning the pages to meet the failures among grapes – the near-misses, the long-forgotten and forlorn lost toys – which please more than the patterns of primacy. The pleasure of reading about the grapes whose juice we do drink is nothing compared to reading about those we don’t. In dictionaries, oddities and parentheses fascinate us more than the major entries. No one turns to the dictionary to study ‘and’; we go to study ‘antediluvian’. So, turning these pages, flipping through the P’s on our way to encounter the great Pinot families, we come upon the lesser gods, even the little misshapen gnomes and dwarves of the wine world, and we delight in meeting them. (A fascination added to by the forthright sub-heads the editors provide.) On our way to Burgundy and Pinot Noir, we also meet Pinotin, a ‘recent obscure Swiss hybrid’ which edges into Pionnier, ‘a minor but complex, cold-hardy American hybrid used in blends in Québec’, and, of course, Pinotage ‘South Africa’s very own cross, both loved and despised’, which leads us on to Pugnitello and even Pukhliakovsky (a Russian variety ‘with erratic yields producing light wines’) and even unto Pules – ‘a minor Albanian white’. Radiating out from five pages on the major Merlot, we bump into Merseguera, ‘an uninspiring variety’ from Spain, and Merzifon Karasi, and Merzling, dismissed as a ‘very minor disease-resistant German hybrid’. Why these lost or obscure kinds of grapes bring so much delight with them is a fascinating question. It has in part to do with our general appetite for oddities and obscurities, which once produced ‘freak shows’ and still makes us fascinated with archaic musical instruments: we are curious to hear the sackbut because we want to know what led to the trombone. It is also the virtuous case that variety is the safeguard of continuity. In an age of ever-decreasing biodiversity with just a few varieties taking the place of many possibilities, one Quixotic California winemaker, driving through the fields of Cabernet and Chardonnay, dismissed them all – with a wave of the hand – as “chocolate and vanilla, chocolate and vanilla”.  The health of the planet is safeguarded by the persistence of so many kinds. It is also because the existence of these minor yet still thriving varieties gives us a satisfying picture of adaptation, the central biological act. Each of these grapes has found a home in the world. It may not be much of a home, but then neither, face the facts, is ours. We identify with the unknown grape. We are all more like a very minor disease-resistant German, or a cold-hardy Québec hybrid, than we are something noble and complicated. Few of us are bottles of Burgundy; we can all identify as minor Albanian whites. In conversation, Jancis Robinson, sheltering at home near Kings Cross in London, a home with a view of a graveyard (though a cheerful one she assures an interviewer) – talks of the wine almanac with the blunt enthusiasm that marks her writing. Robinson, in addition to her obvious honours and credentials, is a rare thing in the wine world, or any world: a writer who writes with equal parts brio and expertise. She explains the origins of Wine Grapes. “What happened was that one of the co-authors, Dr José Vouillamoz, who had been at University of California, Davis, felt that he needed to earn more of a living, and came back to Switzerland and got a job working on Alpine botanicals. But he didn’t want to lose his relationship with wine, and he came to me and said that he’d like to collaborate on a book about grape varieties. I’d already written one in 1986, based on our very fractional knowledge then.  Over lunch, I took along Julia Harding, a wine writer who works on my website. She’s extremely punctilious.” (Robinson, punctilious herself, says this with such emphasis that the listener feels that, with Harding, we must be talking about new frontiers, not to say dimensions, in punctiliousness.) “She had exactly the right sort of brain for a project like this. José suggested that we focus on the 10 or 12 most planted grape varieties to help simplify it. I thought that that book didn’t sound interesting enough. I waited until we were quite far down a bottle of Valpolicella and said, ‘I think our book should be about every single grape variety we can find.’ He gulped and said, ‘Then that’s what we shall do!’” The idea of creating a ‘perfect map’ of a subject is one of the itches that govern modern life. John James Audubon set out to describe not the major but every bird and beast in North America, and that’s what he did. Similar ‘almanacs of everything’ fill our botanical and anthropological shelves. It is an ambition so tied to modernity that in the mid-19th century, Lewis Carroll perfectly satirised it in his novel, Sylvie & Bruno, where two mad professors talk about their dream of making a map that would be on a one-to-one relation to the actual world – utterly perfect, if impossible to unroll. “I loved the scale of the thing,” Robinson says of her perfect map. “So, we carved things up: José did all the DNA stuff and history because he had good access to it, Julia, bless her, did the footwork – how much of each grape is planted where – while trying to taste as many as possible, too! And I wrote the entries on the best-known varieties, and the introduction and read every single word.  As with any dictionary, we used what came before: we went through appellation lists, with all of the varieties allowed, some of them almost extinct. A nice little detail of the book is that we persuaded the publisher that it should have some colour plates, and we were particularly keen to include the plates from the world’s first oenological book, L’Ampélographie: Traité Général de Viticulture, of 1901 … just out of copyright!” She pauses. “Of course,” she adds reflectively, “it was José, naturally, who discovered that Pinot and Syrah are related.” The offhand nature of her mention can’t conceal the significance of the remark. Of all the discoveries offered in the book, this is perhaps, for the amateur wine drinker, the most exemplary and astonishing. Painstakingly tracing the DNA heritage of the varieties, these two noble houses, Syrah and Pinot – the grapes of the Rhône Valley and those of Burgundy, the heart of Côte-Rôtie and the soul of Chambertin – are unified as cousins. This happened not through willed cultivation but in the natural evolutionary way: through variation and adaptation. Initially, the elegance of Pinot Noir was transformed through the usual evolutionary pressures of place and mutations, into the earthy pleasures of Syrah.  Chance mutation and lucky planting turned one grape into its near opposite. (‘Cross-fertilisation’, we’re told, ‘was common until the early 20th century because several grape varieties were often intermixed in the vineyards, facilitating natural crossings between distinct grape varieties’.) The phylloxera epidemic in France from the 1860s on – though it did not destroy as much as is sometimes thought – acted as a kind of sieve or filter of grape varieties, a sort of extinction event in large-scale natural history, forcing hard choices and making obscure varieties less desirable to save by root grafting with New World vines.   One virtue of the book is to propose, in effect, a new order of wines by celebrating ‘secondary’ grape varieties. “For me, among the obscure wines, something about as well-known as Cinsault stands out – it can make such lovely wines,” Robinson says. “There’s been such a sea change as the century turned. Everybody once wanted to make fruit bombs to one of three standard recipes. Then in this century, higher acidity, lighter wines are finally revaluing, and so Cinsault comes into its own. “Sometimes I come across a grape that isn’t well known but that’s so obviously superior. There’s Aglianico – the name suggests it’s Greek, though no Greek variety has ever been found and you only get it in Southern Italy. Perfect for late ripeness, and not for cool climates – and now it has travelled to Australia, where they’re desperate for hot weather varieties.  The whole array of Portuguese and Greek grape varieties are so fantastic! And so individual. And I love that after a dalliance with international varieties, both countries are now celebrating their own. There’s another white grape, an Iberian variety that’s stunning, and, again, I’m not sure it’s yet been planted much: Godello! It’s a bit crass to say it makes wines that taste like Montrachet, if a little more terroir-y and mineral … but it does. I could drink Cinsault for red and Godello for white into the next century. “There’s such a gap nowadays,” Robinson goes on, “between the Napa Cab thing, and these young people who are buying unknown grape varieties that sell for a fraction of the price, that are really good. Such a lot has happened in the field of recuperating old vines, some so obscure that they don’t even have a name. Miguel Torres, the scion of that great company in northeast Spain became very interested in grapes.  At first, he said, ‘Hey Dad, we need the posh varieties, Cabernet and Chardonnay’ – and made all these wines which did well in the Judgement of Paris. But, with time, he realised that it made more sense to concentrate on the indigenous varieties. He’s been engaged for 30 years, putting classified ads in the local press – ‘If you know of a wine grape that you can’t identify, let us know of it, and – if we think we can propagate out – we’ll do micro-vinification.’ He’s actually rescued Catalan varieties that were on the brink of disappearing; I think he found 30 varieties, and recuperated eight for micro-vinification with sufficient character to give them a new lease of life. And much the same thing has been happening all over Italy. If we published the book today, we’d be up to at least 1,500 kinds of grapes.” The great sorting question of our time, of course, is the question of climate change and its effects on wine cultivation. Robinson is cautiously hopeful about Burgundy. “I was lucky enough to go there and spend some time. The 2020 harvest is the earliest ever, at least since the 14th century. But, whereas the 2003 vintage, that legendary hot summer in France, produced wines that were pretty bizarre, the 2019s seem as fresh as a daisy, with pure fruit. I’m no plant biologist, but the vines seem to be getting used to the conditions … or the winemakers are. They’re not extracting as heavily, but, given that, there’s no sign of added acidity (it’s routinely added in the southern hemisphere), the acidity is coming from the grapes as well. Even some real old Burgundy hands, when you ask why the wines are so fresh, say, ‘I really don’t know.’” About the Southern Rhône, though, she is more pessimistic. “They’re not helping themselves in the Southern Rhône: too many are trying to make concentrated, high alcohol, 16% wines. And maybe consultants are too powerful down there – one consultant can be responsible for 20 or 30 labels, and so you’re going to have 20 or 30 wines that reflect that.” It’s here, though, that the knowledge of grapes, and our possession of this specialist dictionary, seems particularly valuable. If wine is to save itself from the vagaries of climate change, it will probably be through the introduction and new use of ‘marginal’ or forgotten ‘heirloom’ grapes. Only recently, France’s Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO) officially approved six new varieties: four red grapes – Arinarnoa, Castes, Marselan, and Touriga Nacional; and two whites – Alvarinho and Liliorila – all described as ‘well-adapted to alleviate hydric stress associated with temperature increases and shorter growing cycles’, potential saviours of the region against the villain of global warming. All of them, of course, are charted and explicated in Wine Grapes.

In the end, the great strange truth of wine is the truth of life: a thousand vectors press down on us at once – place, history, time, temperature, luck and breeding – and somehow in the intersection we find, or make, our pleasures. The question of type and variation was very different before Darwin who wrote, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) almost simultaneously with the great classification of Bordeaux, publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859.  (Oddly because his theory would have been true in any other time; not so oddly because the urge to map the world, for the ‘almanac of everything’, was typical of mid-19th century confidence, as Carroll’s satire suggests.) Before Darwin, who loved wine, the fundamental view of the world was that the superintending categories, species and varieties, were the fixed things in the world. Everyone took it for granted that the ‘kind’ the ‘essence’, was the real thing and all the little variants merely particular shades away from it. A grape was a better or worse instance of its variety. Grapes, like apes, were of one fixed sort. Darwin’s great overriding insight was that only particulars exist, and that species and superintending categories are the labile and ever-changing kinds. Every kind of living thing came from somewhere weird and is on its way to somewhere weirder, with a brief stopover at being the thing it is now. The elegance of Pinot Noir is a close cousin of the earthiness of Syrah, one state is simply a moment in the life of the other, and each are moments in the life of the surging, unfixable whole. Wine, braiding through the planet and only coming to rest on a name for a moment in one place, is a bit of scientific epistemology in your glass, the truth of the particular made potable. It’s a fine destiny for a simple pleasure. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue One Photography by Gavin Bond; floral set design by Studio Lupine

Essayist and author Adam Gopnik takes a look at the world of wine through the lens of seminal wine-lover’s bible, Wine Grapes, and talks to one of its three co-authors, Jancis Robinson MW about the joy of discovering long-forgotten indigenous grape varieties

Adam Gopnik talks to Wine Grapes co-author Jancis Robinson MW about the joy of discovering long-forgotten indigenous grape varieties

FONDATA: Pleasure in the detail

Pleasure in the detail

The Pont des Arts project was created by Thibault Pontallier (son of Paul Pontallier, the celebrated winemaker of Château Margaux from 1983 to 2015) and Arthur de Villepin, an art curator from Paris. Both Thibault and Arthur come from high-profile backgrounds, with Arthur the son of the former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Growing up in such a prestigious and privileged environment introduced them both to the world’s most exciting artists, as well as the world’s most successful winemakers. It was this immersion in both the world of fine art and fine wine that spawned the Pont des Arts project.  “My family has been making wine for more than 500 years, and since I was a kid I have always considered winemakers to be amazing artists who are able to transform and sublimate nature into something truly special and emotional,” says Thibault. “My father used to say, ’A good wine gives you pleasure, but a great wine can give you emotion‘, and it is exactly the same for a great music, movie or painting.” Pont des Arts is very much a project to combine these two cultural worlds, producing wines made – and inspired – by artists. “A certain painting will be able to show and express the depth, the power or the finesse of a subject,” explains Thibault, “and wines can do the same thing. It is the perfect metaphor to understand the magic behind a wine.”   The project aims to position the wine as a bespoke creation. Each winemaker involved in the project has produced a wine distinct from their “normal” range, bottled exclusively for Pont des Arts.  It is then down to Thibault and Arthur to identify how the wine resonates with an artist’s work. “Arthur and I went to the artists’ ateliers, and met with the winemakers for each collection, carefully thinking about the association between each painting and each wine, and to ensure the emotions that are evoked when drinking great wine or looking at great art are intrinsically linked.”  The first collection of wines was curated in 2010 and was in fact a collaboration with Thibault and his father Paul Pontallier. They both travelled throughout France to find inspiration from their many winemaking friends around the country. “My father, a few good winemaking friends and I looked for months for the best terroirs and the best grapes, tasting more than 700 different parcels in France to realise this unique project.” The selection process for them was clear from the outset. For each wine they were looking for three main attributes: “Each wine must have a very special perfume, epitomising each appellation, a huge power hidden by elegance, and a fresh lingering finish.”   Following the success of the initial releases, their collaborations with winemakers grew. They started to work with more vignerons who shared their philosophy and whom they wanted to work with. Etienne de Montille, Rodolphe Péters (of Pierre Péters), Château la Conseillante and Nicole Rolet (of Chêne Bleu) have all made special cuvées for them. “The most important thing is that behind each collaboration is a beautiful friendship, a shared vision, love of wine and trust. We work very closely with each winemaker for every collection. Making sure everyone is part of the process and that the art and the wine complement each other perfectly,” says Thibault. “The wines themselves are works of art, so we spend a lot of time deciding on each new creation.”  The success of the project has seen winemakers entrust Pont des Arts with some very special cuvées. Giving the team amazing access to some rare Premier and Grand Cru wines from some of France’s most celebrated terroirs. With such quality the volume unsurprisingly remains very small, each cuvée exceptionally rare and becoming harder to find, “Exactly like the great pieces of art we work with,” explains Thibault. “What I love with this project is to see the excitement of the winemakers we work with, because they can create something unique and different for Pont des Arts, something different from what they were doing in the past. Our aim is to give them freedom and allow the creativity to create something unique and special.”  Perhaps Pont des Arts’s access to some of the world’s finest winemakers and terroirs is not such a surprise given the reputation of Paul Pontallier. Securing artists for the project seems more difficult, particularly with such famous artists as Piet Mondrian. While some of the artists – such as the Spain’s Miguel Barceló and French Chinse Artist Zao Wou-Ki were long-term friends of the Villepin family, for artists like Piet Mondrian, Thibault and Arthur were in touch with the estate throughout the whole process (design, production, labels etc). “They were very happy to help us develop this collection as they liked the initiative behind Pont des Arts.” Thibault is keen to convey “a message with authenticity and passion,” he tells me. “I guess the people we are collaborating with can sense that, which makes everything much easier.”  The Pont des Arts project continues to expand with some of the world’s most exciting contemporary artists and winemakers lining up to take part in new collaborations. One of the latest releases to come from Pont des Arts is a Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs from renowned winemaker Rodolphe Péters of Champagne Pierre Péters with artwork by Miquel Barceló on the label. Look out for this release early next week.  Explore more Editorial

Pont des Arts is a collaboration between artists and winemakers to promote the intricacies of fine wine production through the lens of an artist. We talk to Thibault Pontallier – son of the late Paul Pontallier – about the inspiration behind the project. 

Pont des Arts is a collaboration between artists and winemakers to promote the intricacies of fine wine production through the lens of an artist. 

Pont des Arts, winemaking as an artform 

Pont des Arts: winemaking as an artform 

Mosel and the Kingdom of Prussia At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the Mosel region was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia. Following this, the region went through a period of great change. Initially, the elimination of the domestic German customs borders brought high competitive pressure on Mosel from other big wine-growing areas (e.g. Pfalz, Baden, Württemberg) and prices decreased dramatically. In addition to this, bad weather conditions and the outbreak of new pests in the region, saw regular crop failures, leading to economic hardship for many winegrowers in the region.  Despite the initial deterioration of the region, the Prussian government saw Mosel as a wine region worth saving, deciding to invest heavily into the wine industry. During the 1850s the construction of the railway line along the river was completed providing faster and easier access to the German Reich´s main traffic routes and therefore hugely improving the logistics of moving wine around the country and beyond.  Additionally, government domaines were built for research purposes, further developing modern technologies that were being applied in the vineyard and wineries. The focus was set on the wine quality: winemakers should grow the Riesling grape variety, they should harvest late and be highly selective when picking the grapes to produce better quality, and the wines should be "natural“ (without any additives, without being chaptalized, etc.). In the 1880s several vintages were of outstanding quality, and the interest in Mosel Riesling grew around Europe.  By the 1890s Mosel was enjoying a golden era in which its reputation for fine wine production saw a boom in sales throughout the 1890s. Furthermore, the consumer´s understanding of taste changed from heavy red wines to light, refreshing whites, rich in aroma and acidity.  The boom led to tourism, many people from all over Europe came to the valley, including famous artists such as William Turner and poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Mosel Riesling was drunk by nearly all secular and ecclesiastical rulers of Europe – Berlin, St. Petersburg, London, etc. Kaiser Wilhelm II also visited the area several times. The wines were on the lists of all top restaurants around the world. Mosel was the world’s fine wine mecca.  
The wine styles of Mosel’s golden era 
By the beginning of 20th century, nearly all of the wines coming from the Mosel area were dry or maximum off-dry because there was no technical possibility to interrupt fermentation unnaturally. All of the Rieslings were fermented by natural yeasts only. They were kept in large "Fuder“-barrels – kept on their lees (sur lie – the dead yeast cells) for several months, sometimes even for more than a year, adding textural, aromatic and flavour complexity. The style of our dry and off-dry wines could be compared to the wines from 100 years ago. All of our wines ferment naturally, in the spirit of authenticity, vineyard character, complexity and longevity. No fining agents, enzymes or other additives are ever used. Most of the wines remain on their yeasts ("sur lie“) for months, gaining in mellowness and body.   During that time, winemakers did not have the technical possibility to stop fermentation earlier with a higher proportion of residual sugar. The machine needed for this procedure, containing a special filter which stabilises the wines by pulling yeasts and other solids out, only came into commercial use in the 1960s. An invention that would turn the style of the region’s wines on its head and damage its reputation as one of the world's leading fine wine regions.  In 1868 the Prussian tax authorities published the first official wine terroir classification in the world. This classification was used to set tax rates – the higher the quality of the single vineyard was rated, the higher the tax rates for the winegrowers (the darker red coloured the plots on the map – see map).  In addition, this map was an unprecedented tool for promoting wine by the Prussian government and proved a fantastically successful approach in identifying the nuances of each vineyard and was to be imitated by several other wine regions in Germany and beyond.  

Despite being 150 years ago, we think that this classification was very accurate in terms of identifying quality. The completely south-facing steep slopes are still the best to grow vines in our valley. Due to enlargements during 20th century some important vineyard sites are missing, in terms of our winery, it would be Wehlener Klosterberg vineyard which has proven to belong to the red or even dark red coloured surfaces on the map.  Due to climate change, we think that several vineyard sites which are located in side valleys or on a higher altitude have actually improved over the last decades. Nowadays they would also belong to the higher or highest-rated plots. But overall their assessment was petty accurate. The World War years
 The World Wars were obviously going to have a devastating effect on the region situated on the border of France and Luxembourg and this brought an end to the golden era. Whilst Riesling was the most planted and popular variety, Pinot Noir was also grown very successfully in the region until it was banned by the Nazis in 1933. The Nazis forbade the growing of French varieties and asked vignerons to focus on the prestigious "German“ Riesling in the Mosel wine-growing area which used to be the showpiece for them, being famous all over the world. The ban quite shockingly lasted until the end of the 1980s, therefore the tradition of red winemaking was nearly completely lost in the region. I was one of the “pioneers“ in the area to cultivate Pinot Noir again by planting the first vines in 1987 on the south-facing steep slope called Graacher Himmelreich. 
Mosel: the post-war period 
After WW II there was a huge request for fruity and light white wines and with the economic hardship that followed, a refocus towards quantity rather than quality. The Mosel Rieslings were swept up in this, predestined to produce high quantity, light, sweet wines. Winemakers
all along the river enlarged their vineyard surface, not only in the steep slopes but above all in the flat lands on the other side of the river.  Growing there was much easier and less time and work intense, and therefore also a lot cheaper. Mosel wines became famous as “sweet and cheap“ all over the world – markets were flooded. This concept based on quantity led to an enormous enlargement of vineyard area in the Mosel region from 7500 hectares to 12,300 hectares in the early 1990s. The glycol scandal (when antifreeze was discovered in bulk Austrian wine shipped to large German wineries in bulk and bottled under the German winery labels) only further enhanced the bad reputation of wines from our area.  
Mosel today: a 21st-century golden era Whilst nearly everything has changed over the last two decades the whole wine-growing area still suffers from the “Black Towers“ and “Blue Nuns“ sweet and cheap German wines that despite a drop in popularity still are made in vast quantities and exported all over the world. It is our aim to help restore the wines of our valley to their former glory, therefore we focus uncompromisingly on quality in every step of our daily work.  Luckily the understanding has changed – nearly all winemakers especially the young generation rely on the traditional ways of quality winemaking again and combine it with modern technology, new insights of research, as well as their passion for the famous steep slopes of our region. Wine lovers all over the world are recognising these changes as positive and we think we are back on the right track to regain the popularity and reputation garnered to the region during the golden era of the 1880s and 1890s. Explore more Editorial 

Markus Molitor shares the fascinating history of Mosel outlining the reasons behind the region's meteoric rise to glory at the end of the nineteenth century, its demise during the two World Wars and then its economic devastation in the 1980s.

Markus Molitor outlines the history of Mosel wines and winemaking from 1815 to 2020 – and the reasons behind the wine region's meteoric rise to glory

The history of Mosel wines and vineyards

The history of Mosel wines 1815-2020

As perhaps befits a man on the brink of his 9th decade, Bill Harlan measures time not in weeks, months or even years, but decades, half-centuries, centuries. It seems natural, sitting as we are among the grand oak fermenters at Harlan, having finished a tasting of 27 vintages of this most renowned of wines, to look at the broad sweep of time both forward and back. 
Harlan, who turns 80 in September, has talked before about his “200-year plan” for the great Napa estate. “This is a work in progress. If you have a long-term plan it makes short-term decisions easier – is this the best decision for the long term? So we ask, how many times a century will we be replanting? Then interplanting of rows and vines – should that be every 40 years or every 50 years?” 
Longevity has always been the plan, ever since 1984, when Harlan, Ric Forman and David Abreu identified six acres of hillside above Oakville as land with the potential to make first-class wine. It was a heavily wooded parcel, chiefly volcanic and sedimentary soil bedrock, which over time would be expanded to the 100ha (240 acre) horse-shoe of ridge, shallow valley and mountainside, with aspects to all points of the compass, that the winery sits on today. To stand on the terrace and look east over Napa is to get a sense of the extraordinary vastness and beauty of the land. Harlan's goal is simple: “We need to know how better to express the character of the property.” The soil is key, of course, but there’s a certain poetry to this slight, grizzled adventurer (something of a daredevil in his youth, he founded the Pacific Union real estate company in 1984 and went on to develop upscale resort Meadowood and co-found Merryvale winery before realising his dream in Harlan Estate. He’s said to be a ferocious negotiator. “You wouldn’t want to get into a poker game with him,” one observer has noted). “Most of the estate is wild land. You still have the animals, the fresh smell of the air, the forest floor. All these things make up the character of the wines.” 
Harlan has no intention of expanding the 16ha (40 acres) vineyard, which produces an average 2,000 bottles a year – just making it “better, and stronger”. He considers that the period of “stabilising” is over, and they are now into a process of “establishing”. 
It’s a subtle difference, and when Harlan hands over full responsibility to his son Will and daughter Amanda later this year (“an 80-year-old oughtn’t to be running anything”), they will have decades of experience to draw on. Bob Levy, the director of winegrowing, joined full-time in 1990, winemaker Cory Empting has been there 20 years, estate director Don Weaver since 1986 – two generations of treading the dirt. This is not to mention the “vinemasters” – veteran vineyard workers who are given total responsibility for sections of vineyard, in order to “get to know each vine,” as Harlan puts it. “The continuity is understanding the land.” 
The tasting took place at a long table in the fermentation room at Harlan Estate in early March 2020. As well as Bill and Will Harlan, Levy, Empting and Weaver were present, Harlan educator Kelli White, Jamie Ritchie, head of Sotheby’s fine wine, Jim Walker (a long-standing Harlan collector) and critic Elaine Chukan Brown. The vintages were tasted young to old, 2016 to 1990, in three flights of nine wines. Harlan talked of a work in progress: this was to see it in operation, a clear progression as vines get older, the estate increases in size and parcel selection gets more targeted. Today a blending session comprises up to 150 wines, taken from multiple different vineyard samples, tanks and barrels. This was, without doubt, one of the signature tastings of my career. These are some of the most expensive and sought-after wines in the world, and to spend a day tasting them – out of magnum – was a remarkable experience. This is not to say that the wines were approached with undue reverence. Harlan, his longstanding team, and the few guests examined each flight with concentration but not awe. The Harlan style runs through the vintages, getting stronger towards the present. The finest wines are brightly perfumed in youth and mellowing to dried petals and dried herb as they age; there is earth, blue fruit ageing to dark, a certain savouriness and sometimes an animal tang (“most of the estate is wild land”).  Another hallmark is understated energy, a pure and clear line that runs through each wine and through the decades. The wines have weight and heft – you know where you are with them – but only once was alcohol, or over-ripeness, mentioned. There is marked vintage variation – the notoriously cool and wet 2011, or the famously warm 1997, for example, are unmistakable. From Bordeaux to Napa, wines of great renown are sometimes described as “smart”, which means they are in some way tailored; they may be delicious, but they are made with an audience in mind. Harlan Estate doesn’t give that impression: you rather understand that here is a winemaker and a team searching for an interpretation of a terroir that is not fixed but changing as the vines age. Bill Harlan returns to this theme again and again. He talks of having “captured” the land, of its protean nature – “as the roots go deeper, the shapes of your blocks move and evolve like amoebas. It’s organic – you don’t lay out the blocks for good, you learn how they change, by being out there in the field.” As the land changes so do its stewards. The official handover to the next generation is imminent and Harlan is happy. “Everything seems to be in place,” he says. “They’ve never done this before, and I’ve never done it before, but it’s working well.” Tasting notes NB: All wines are Bordeaux blends of approximately 15% alcohol, with an average 75% Cabernet Sauvignon plus varying proportions of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
Published with the kind permission of luxury wine, spirits and lifestyle brand Club Oenologique - an exclusive community for those who enjoy the rarer pleasures of life.  Read more about Harlan 

Earlier this year, one of Napa’s starriest names put on a vertical tasting of its entire 27 vintages for luxury wine, spirits and lifestyle magazine, Club Oenologique. Adam Lechmere reflects on the wines and hears from Bill Harlan as he prepares to hand over the reins to his children

Napa’s starriest names put on a vertical tasting of 27 vintages and we hear from Bill Harlan as he prepares to hand over the reins to his children

Three decades of Napa's Harlan Wine Estate

Three decades of Napa's Harlan Estate

It was a small yellow aphid that disregarded national borders, wiping out the livelihood of every grape grower in its way and there was no known cure nor effective prevention in its first devastating years. Even when a cure was discovered, growers were reluctant – and often financially unable – to use it.  As a result, phylloxera vastatrix  – vastratix meaning ravager – continued to nibble on the roots of vines across western Europe, sucking the lifeblood from the vines and leaving wounds for any passing infection. By 1900, 2.5 million hectares of France's vineyard had been uprooted, causing production to slump, encouraging dodgy dealers to make fake wine, and leading to mass protests.  The story of phylloxera in Europe started as a well-intentioned gift. In 1862, an American grape grower sent some cuttings of native vines to his friend in the Rhône Valley who planted them, unaware of the damage it would inflict on his compatriots. Within a year, local growers were lamenting their sick vines. Phylloxera had wanderlust, sparing no French region; nor did it respect the country's finest terroirs or illustrious châteaux.  However, a concerted national response to the potential ruin of the country's national beverage was not forthcoming. The French government was too busy putting on International Exhibitions in Paris (1867), opening the Suez Canal (1869) and waging war on Prussia (1870-71). In 1870, the government acknowledged there might be an issue, offering a 20,000 Franc reward for a cure. Remedies were offered including burying living toads in the vineyard, adding volcanic ash from Pompeii to the soil or inviting a marching band to play to the vines. Unsurprisingly, the vines continued to die. In 1880, a solution was finally accepted: graft European varieties to the roots of American vines. However, grafting noble French varieties - vitis vinifera - to the roots of these lowly American varieties seemed like sacrilege to many growers. It was thought they would affect the nobility of their precious wines. There was also the issue of cost: uprooting your vineyard, replanting and then having to wait between three and five years for a crop did not feed a family and the concept of state aid was still a long way off.  As a result, many tried to limp on for as long as possible, injecting carbon bisulphide, an expensive and toxic solvent used to vulcanise rubber, into the soil to stave off the inevitable.  The producers in the south of France were the first to be hit in the 1860s and they replanted with high-yielding hybrids. By the turn of the century, the Languedoc was producing more wine than ever before. However, the region's unscrupulous merchants made up for the initial shortfall at peak phylloxera by bulking out grape juice with sugar and water while others made wines from raisins. These practices continued despite the replanted vineyards returning to full production, causing a huge oversupply and depressing prices.  Urged on by a growing labour movement, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 1907 to call for change. The Champagne Riots of 1911 The Champenois followed suit, rioting in the streets in 1911 and the root of their troubles also lay with phylloxera.  In 1892, the Marne was invaded by its first phylloxera aphid and, by 1910, 40% of the region had been affected. But this was no time for production to fall: Champagne sales were booming and to make up for the shortfall, dodgy merchants (and some of the seemingly reputable houses) brought in wines from the Loire and the south of France by the train-load. The wines were made sparkling in their cellars and the bottles emerged, as if by magic, as Champagne. Supply and demand economics suggested that the growers should have been earning more for their fruit as phylloxera affected supply and sales boomed, but fake Champagne kept prices low. Having borne the cost of replanting their vineyards, this was not how growers imagined they would be rewarded and protests ensued.  While most vineyards in Champagne and beyond are now planted on American rootstocks, there are some vines and vineyard owners that play wine roulette and grow vitis vinifera on their own roots. For example, three plots belonging to Bollinger were planted in 1960 in the traditional pre-phylloxera way. One has succumbed to the vine louse but the remaining two parcels are the source of Vieilles Vignes Françaises, a rare Pinot Noir-based Champagne that provides a taste of a bygone era.  We asked Denis Bunner, Bollinger’s Deputy Cellar Master, about the Aÿ-based Champagne House's rarest wine, Vieilles Vignes Françaises, which is produced on its own roots.  Why did Bollinger begin producing Vieilles Vignes Françaises in 1969?  An English journalist Cyril Ray proposed the initiative to Madame Bollinger following a visit in 1967 and this inspired Madame Bollinger to create a wine from the precious vines to commemorate her 70th birthday, which saw the first bottle produced in 1969. The wine was launched in 1974. Are the vines pre-phylloxera? If so, they must be more than a century old. No, the current plots in Aÿ were planted in the 1960s but it is impossible to give an age to the vines due to the perpetual renewal and the way the root system grow [the system is called provignage, which is like vine fostering when there is an empty space to fill. Take a cane from one vine, train it down into the soil and partially bury it with the end sticking out until it forms a separate vine. This is also done in the Nacional vineyard at Quinta do Noval]. There were three plots that weren't grafted but there are now only two. What happened? third plot succumb to phylloxera?  The third plot in Croix Rouge de Bouzy was attacked by phylloxera at the end of the 1990s – the vineyard didn't have protective walls around it. The last vintage was 2004 as we had to uproot it when it fell prey to the infestation. How many acres do the two remaining plots cover?  The Clos Saint-Jacques (Aÿ) covers just over half an acre while the Clos des Chaudes-Terres, which lies within the boundaries of Bollinger’s own lands, covers a little over a third of an acre. In total, they represent 0.36 hectares. Is there anything special about the soil of these two plots that means it resists phylloxera?  The soil is not remarkably different from that in the rest of Aÿ and as per the rest of Champagne it features chalk. Is this special cuvee made every year?  No. Only in declared vintages. What is the average production of Vieilles Vignes Françaises?  This varies by vintage, but falls within the range of 2,000 to 3,000 bottles. A total of 2,420 numbered bottles of the 2009 Vieilles Vignes Françaises vintage were produced. Read more Editorial

Following the release of Bollinger’s latest vintage of Vieilles Vignes Françaises, we talk to Denis Bunner, Bollinger’s Deputy Cellar Master about the Aÿ-based Champagne house's rarest wine, as well as delving into the archives to explore the history of the fatal vine louse.

Phylloxera and Bollinger’s Vieilles Vignes Françaises on the wine grown from vines planted on its own roots and thus vulnerable to attack by the louse.

Phylloxera and winemaking

Phylloxera: a vine pandemic

Olivier Humbrecht was in London earlier this year giving a masterclass on single-vineyard Pinot Gris from Alsace. His motivation and his love for dry Pinot Gris evolves around the varietal being the greatest transmitter of terroir, much more so than its more famous sibling Riesling whose natural aromatics can conceal its terroir blueprint. Of course that was just the starting point of the masterclass and it quickly evolved into a much more in-depth conversation on the virtues of singular plots and the underpinning concepts of fine wine. We caught up with him to get further insight into his pioneering approach in viticulture which is being adopted by some of the finest wine producers in the world. The changing fortunes of Pinot Gris Humbrecht is a strong believer in the potential of Pinot Gris, a varietal that has ebbed and flowed in popularity through the last century. It is a varietal that due to its rather neutral primary attributes means it is perhaps more than any other grape, at the throes of its maker.  Styles vary greatly from the high-yielding neutral, phenolic, early picked and refreshing Pinot Grigio synonymous with northern Italy. At its worst, the variety produces a wine of almost no character and no sense of place. At its best, the dry, vibrant Pinot Grigio from Alto Adige can be fantastically intense, mineral and refreshing, whilst remaining fairly neutral on the palate. Pinot Grigio Romato styles in Friuli (a skin contact rose style) offer more flavor definition and
richness whilst at the same time being distinctly phenolic with vibrant acidity and a bitter bite keeping the wine refreshing and uniquely Italian in character.  The Pinot Gris of Alsace is typically later picked and completely different to the Italian style in its flavor profile, taking on a distinct honeysuckle, musk, smoky, toasty quality. Even within Alsace, this varietal has many faces. In the 1960s Olivier reminds us that Pinot Gris from Alsace was the most popular and most expensive wine in the region, but also the rarest and typically very sweet, as it is prone to noble rot resulting in intensely rich, opulent wines. In 1990 just 2% of the vineyards in Alsace were planted with Pinot Gris, today it is up to 15%. But Pinot Gris is not an easy grape to get right and whilst the early picked, neutral style of Northern Italy can crop at high levels with little issue, to make Pinot Gris with more aromatic character is much more difficult to get right and therefore becomes a much less reliable crop and accounts for the small amounts grown in Alsace. It is a varietal very prone to rot due to its thin skin. In ideal conditions, this makes it ideal for noble rot but in less than perfect conditions grey rot is more common making the grapes not suitable for fine wine. The rot will often result in aborted fermentation.  The varietal is also very quick to ripen. If not picked in a very small picking window, the alcohols could shoot up too high making a healthy fermentation very difficult and, more often than not, leading to high levels of residual sugar in the wine, whether you want it or not. Olivier outlines that just taking a weekend off during harvest could amount to a potential 1.5% abv increase when returning to the vines on Monday morning. In under a week, the potential alcohol could have gone up by 3% abv.  Picking the wines too early also has its problems. All the flavor and aromas in the varietal develop at the final stages of ripening, picking early will produce wines with little complexity and character. This tricky little grape is no doubt the reason why so little was planted in the region despite the popularity of the top Pinot Gris sweet wines. The recent increase in plantings in Alsace however has not been brilliantly successful. For Olivier too much Pinot Gris has been planted in inadequate sites and using higher yielding commercial clones. For Olivier, top Pinot Gris from Alsace must come from the traditional petit grains clone that is naturally low-yielding. Olivier likes each vine to produce just 2 clusters producing just 25-30 hectolitres per hectare. These cropping levels are necessary to produce fine wine examples from the grape. Olivier’s interest in Pinot Gris is down to its relatively neutral character making it a great transmitter of terroir, more so than Riesling whose natural aromatic presence can conceal terroir characters. Fairly neutral flavour characters also mean it remains very much a winemaker’s wine, as the vigneron can determine the style of the wine with lees work, oak maturation, and the retention of malolactic fermentation, providing the grapes come in clean, free of rot. Olivier believes élevage on full lees makes a very important difference to the flavor of the wine. The lees nourish the wine through ageing, producing a much more complex
flavour profile. It brings a smokiness and toasty character to the wine as well as a more reductive “mineral” character. Global warming It is rare to hear a vigneron say that global warming has improved the quality of their
wines, but Olivier honestly states that, for the moment, global warming has benefited his wines. What it has done is bring flowering forward, possibly up to three weeks earlier which shunts all the growing season forward, this means the all-important veraison period (sugar concentration in the grapes) is beginning to happen three weeks earlier.  Rather than waiting for grapes to ripen in September as the days are getting shorter and the weather much less reliable, veraison is now happening at the height of the summer enabling the wines to reach optimum ripeness quicker preventing the onset of rot – which in poorer weather becomes a lot more common.  Biodynamic since 1998, Olivier has seen a really positive effect in the vineyard. The grapes are able to ripen faster, reaching physiological ripeness quicker, which enables Olivier to make dry Pinot Gris packed with flavor. This, he believes, is because chemical applications shock the vines, causing them to shut down for a number of days following the application. If you continue to spray chemical applications throughout the growing season, each time this happens the vine shuts down and you lose valuable days of ripening.  Under biodynamic principles, the vines don’t go through these shock / shutting-down
phases. This allows Olivier to pick earlier and he is the first to harvest the Pinot Gris compared to his neighbours. This he believes is largely due to his grapes ripening faster, due to his viticultural techniques.  It means he can get his wines to reach aromatic complexity whilst still being able to bring them in early enough free of rot and therefore enabling a fermentation to dryness. The reason for Olivier's interest in producing dry styles of Pinot Gris is so he can show off the terroir characteristics of each of his sites without being concealed by sweetness. Tasting the different vineyards shows just how different each of the sites is and only further promotes Pinot Gris as the ultimate transmitter of terroir. A pioneer of modern-day viticulture Speaking with top viticulturalists all over the world, you realise a huge amount of their knowledge stems from Olivier Humbrecht, whose understanding of managing vine growth originated from a university lecture he attended in the 1980s, given not by a viticulturist, but a plant physiologist.  From this lecture, Olivier understood that modern-day hedging techniques in the vineyard were really detrimental to fruit production. Olivier explains the domesticated vine goes through two very different stages in its growth period. Stage one is the phase of cellular multiplication i.e. the growth of the vine – flowering, budding, leaf production etc. Stage two is the nourishment phase in which the vine stops growing and instead starts to nourish the pips in the grapes, to promote future cellular growth when the seeds are dispersed.  The problem with modern hedging techniques is that it disturbs stage one when the vine is
on the verge of moving to stage two, therefore encouraging the vine to carry out stage one and two at the same time, meaning the grape isn’t getting full nourishment at the period of veraison as some of the vine’s energy is going into vine growth. The key for Olivier is to get stage two to follow on from stage one rather than the vines trying to do both at the same time. Preventing canopy growth, however, requires a lot more manual work. Olivier states it
requires 20 men to tie up the vines manually compared to one tractor hedging the vines. One possible solution could be to hedge the vines earlier in the growth phase so as not to disrupt the vine later in the season switching from stage 1 to stage 2 but Olivier explains this is not a good approach. Tartaric acid is key to any white wine, and it is the necessary backbone to any wine.  Tartaric acid is produced by the leaves. Olivier emphasizes that many people wrongly
think leaves only create sugar through photosynthesis, but they are necessary for producing a whole array of essential nutrients, hormones and the all-important production of tartaric acid. The secret lies in extended canopy growth. I said to Olivier this sounds exactly what Lalou
Bize Leroy does in Burgundy and he admits that he visited her years ago and told her his ideas on canopy management and she clearly took his advice. Whilst it is incredibly high maintenance and an expensive operation, two of the world’s leading winemakers Humbrecht and Leroy are advocates of the system and that should be enough for any vigneron to at least consider the technique, despite the additional costs it entails.  The single vineyards Rotenburg The Rotenburg vineyard is a cooler north-facing slope facing the Vogues mountains. Made up of red marl on a limestone bedrock with very shallow brick colour soil (containing high iron content). All this amounts to slower ripening, naturally lower vigour and tiny yields. Olivier typically crops at 25 hectolitres per hectare. Olivier states what is great about this vineyard when made in the dry style, the effect of the limestone really comes through on the palate. Tasting through the 2017, ’16 and ’13 the wines share a wonderful aromatic complexity.
Easily the most floral and perfumed of the three vineyards. There is a wonderful chalky minerality to the wine, almost top quality Chablis but with a softer texture and more perfumed. With age, the aromas and flavours only further develop whilst retaining a wonderful intensity. The wine remains very clean despite its age, showing very little tertiary
development just lovely orange rind and honeysuckle notes. The chalky limestone
minerality brings sharp focus and intensity to the finish. Clos Windsbuhl The first vintage for Zind Humbrecht on this site was the 1988 vintage. Another limestone/
clay site overlooking the church of Sainte Hune (famous for the Trimbach’s Clos Sainte Hune cuvee). Facing south, south-east with a steep slope between 15 – 40% this is a high altitude site at 350 metres. A 6.5 hectares site planted mostly to Pinot Gris. Due to the
altitude and soil the grapes ripens very slowly, often on the precipice of reaching ripeness before the wine gets affected by noble rot.  Tasting through the ’17, ’16 and ’13 what is immediate in the comparison is how the wine
develops with age. At just three years of age, the wine remains compact, at seven years of age it is incredibly complex on the palate. The primary notes have retained their zesty vivacity but the flavours become broad from russet apple, manuka honey and sultanas and a wonderful salinity and stony minerality on the finish. The wine becomes more and more focused on the finish. Clearly, the wine is affected by vintage too. The ’16 is a more difficult vintage making the wine a lot less intense than the ’17 and the ’13 but throughout the lineup, the salinity and stony minerality comes through on the palate – a distinct characteristic
of the limestone soil. Rangen de Thann Unlike Rotenburg and Clos Windsbuhl, Rangen de Thann is made up of volcanic soil, very
dark basalt rock, rich in magnesium and potassium and low in calcium so lower acidity, higher pH. The slope is the steepest in Alsace with a 41-degree slope. The vineyard has an incredibly high vine density at 10,000 vines per hectare. It is in fact one of the warmer regions of Alsace therefore you would expect it to be one of the first to ripen, but the cold wind that flows through the valley slows the ripening making it the last vineyard Oliver harvests. This is typically the lowest-yielding site at Zind Humbrecht at 20 – 30 hectolitres per hectare. The volcanic soil offers a completely different blueprint to the wine. Texturally the wine is much more oily and rich. The flavours are more pumice stone, peppery, matcha tea and then this distinct Brazil nut flavor. There are no tropical notes at all in its youth and very much more savoury in style. With age the ’13 vintage shows more tropical notes, the texture becomes unctuous in its oiliness, it feels like there is sweetness despite being a dry wine. These wines lack the vibrancy from the limestone but offer more richness, texture and darker fruit and savoury flavour profile. Explore more Editorial

Meeting with Olivier Humbrecht is always an insightful experience. Not only is he incredibly
erudite in his approach to viticulture and winemaking but he has the rare talent of being able to communicate fairly complex ideas around the subject in a very clear and digestible manner. 

An insight into Olivier Humbrecht's pioneering biodynamic approach to viticulture that is now widely adopted by many of the world's fine wine producers 

Domaine Denis Mortet

About the producer

Please wait

Domaine Denis Mortet

About the producer

Filter

Please wait

Related articles