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

While the 100-point-scoring Pomerol Ch. L’Eglise-Clinet is the jewel in the Durantou crown, the family works with three other estates – Les Cruzelles, Saintayme and Montlandrie, in the Côtes de Castillon. The family bought the 28 hectares of this latter property in 2009. It perches at 86 metres’ altitude (a relatively lofty height for this part of the world), on the same limestone terrace as the heart of Saint-Emilion, which re-emerges here, next to the town of Castillon-la-Bataille. And it’s this limestone which defines the site – bringing incredible freshness to the wines it produces. The Castillon property has been totally replanted, and not just to vines, but with olives, oak trees and truffles, as well as vines, and space for beehives too. They’ve got a well and solar panels on the winery, meaning they are totally off-grid and self-sufficient – Noëmie Durantou Reilhac (who took over after her father Denis passed away) tells us how her father used to joke that if anything happened, Montlandrie is where they would go – their arc for the apocalypse. As it has been planted entirely by the Durantous, the vine spacing is very specific – 6,172 vines per hectare, a number based on the golden ratio, with vines planted 1.62 x 1m, as dreamt up by the late Denis. The vineyards are also still babies – with an average age of just 10 years, and the youngest fledgling vines planted this year, all with massal selections from Eglise-Clinet. This wild and spacious property is a total contrast to Eglise-Clinet, which has been in the Durantou family since the 18th century. Their Pomerol estate takes its name from the church that was once nearby, the cemetery of which has survived (with a new church built in the heart of the village, visible across the brow of the hill). The vineyards were leased for many years, and it was only under Denis Durantou that the family reclaimed them, in 1982. The oldest vineyard plots date back to 1905 – century-old field blends that even have a handful of Malbec vines scattered in amongst them. They have a mere 4.5 hectares, divided in parcels around the château, all on soils that are a combination of the region’s famous blue clay and ferruginous sandstone. Here in the heart of Pomerol, there’s no space for an olive grove or other crops – the tiny plots are far too precious for such folly. Tasting the wine from these two addresses in two utterly different vintages – 2013 and 2018 – shines a light on the sites, the style and the winemaking. The 2013 vintage is not fashionable among collectors – the rainy year led to immense disease pressure and made it challenging to ripen fruit. But, as Durantou Reilhac told us, what you do with the fruit you pick is much more important than the vintage itself. A cooler, off-vintage, the 2013s are rarely wines that earn high scores (or demand), yet these are the years that are most revealing, and often insider choices. By contrast, 2018 is remembered as a warm year – the first of the trilogy of excellent vintages (along with 2019 and ’20). The reality, however, was an incredibly wet start to the season, with rain throughout May and June, the weather only becoming hot and dry from mid-July – and saving the season. The resulting wines are blockbusters – bold, rich and ripe, and some that are perhaps overly so. The 2013s both showed a more herbaceous freshness, with redder fruit, slightly more austere tannins and lighter body – yet both Montlandrie and Eglise-Clinet were moreish. They are wines that I would consider the perfect “luncheon Claret”, with just a hint of savoury leather and sousbois creeping into their profile, both gasping for food. Both really benefited from additional air, relaxing their structure a little and making them more approachable. Unsurprisingly, the 2018s were different beasts. “The more I taste [the 2018 vintage], the more I love it,” Durantou Reilhac said. And with these wines, it was easy to see why. Especially for Montlandrie, whose vines were that much older by this vintage, the wine showed a vibrancy and dark perfume that Durantou Reilhac described beautifully as “baroque”. The 2018 Eglise-Clinet effortlessly stole the show at the tasting, a wine that is yet to reveal itself fully, but already offers so much. The wine is dense, compact, with an angularity to the frame around tightly packed, pure and seamless fruit, gradually revealing delicate florals. “You can feel the potential of full bloom,” Durantou Reilhac said, comparing the wine to a flower just starting to unfurl its petals.  For Durantou Reilhac, the key to producing wines like this is the harvest date. “If you look and you wait, you don’t control anything anymore,” she explains – and this was a particular danger in 2013, with some waiting too long. Ultimately, the goal is to craft wines that echo the perfect peach, plucked fresh from the tree – juicy and sweet, yet vibrant and mouth-watering – a pure expression of the very freshest fruit. To do that, they opt for gentle extraction, lower fermentation temperatures and shorter maceration times, as well as careful use of oak – with the aim “to enhance in a tactile way”, rather than add aromatics. For the 2018s, for example, one might assume they would have used a higher portion of new oak, with the concentrated fruit able to handle more – but in fact they used less. “The structure was already so powerful,” Durantou Reilhac tells us, and they didn’t want to “overbuild” the wine with more, “It would have crashed against the fruit.” New oak can help bring acidity and freshness, while one or two-year-old oak can “tire” the wine, she finds. The key, however, is to find the balance between the acidity and tannin: “A great wine makes you accept its acidity, thanks to its tannins,” she explains. It's unfair in many ways to put the much more modest Montlandrie alongside Eglise-Clinet, but the wines are so different, and Montlandrie already shows such potential – only reinforced by tasting recent vintages en primeur (with the 2022 a particular highlight of the vintage). Montlandrie offers a much more linear, direct and fresh style – much closer, unsurprisingly given its limestone, to Saint-Emilion than Pomerol. Eglise-Clinet, however, is plusher, denser, yet not at all over the top – managing to be both immensely concentrated and structured, yet elegant and contained. They are totally different sites, two totally different expressions of the Durantou style – but it’s perhaps the restraint, freshness and purity of fruit that connects the two. The thread of perfume and precision runs throughout, wines that – even in vintages as big and bold as 2018 – you simply want to drink. Browse all Eglise-Clinet and Montlandrie listings, or read more about Bordeaux

The Durantou family needs little introduction – creating some of the Right Bank’s finest wines, including Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet. Noëmie Durantou Reilhac – who is now at the helm of the family’s estates – dropped by our office to taste two contrasting vintages from two of the family’s properties

Tasting two contrasting vintages of Ch. l’Eglise-Clinet and Ch. Montlandrie with Noëmie Durantou Reilhac – the woman at the helm of the Durantou estates today

Tasting Montlandrie and Eglise-Clinet

Tasting with Noëmie Durantou Reilhac: Montlandrie and Eglise-Clinet

Noemia

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