Will Berliner says he didn’t drink wine until he was in his 50s. There might have been the odd bottle of Thunderbird in his teens – he’s a New Yorker by birth – but that was all. ‘All I knew was that white wine was for girls and red wine was for guys. I never drank it.’ So it’s remarkable that now, in his 70s (he looks a decade younger), he’s producing a wine that has been lauded since its first vintage in 2010. Cloudburst, from Margaret River in Western Australia, has been described as ‘otherworldly and memorable’ by Matthew Jukes; ‘fearless and uncompromising’ (Huon Hooke); and ‘a gorgeous wine’ (Jane Anson). It joined the mighty John Riddoch and The Armagh as the first Australian wines on the Bordeaux Place. ‘Will works in ways that are completely different to the mainstream. He’s doing amazing things and his wines are excellent,’ Andrew Caillard MW, author of The Australian Ark, told me. In minimalist, etched glass (screwcaps on both red and white), Cloudburst wines sell for between £130 and £200 per bottle. It’s one of the most expensive Margaret River wines but given that it’s vanishingly rare – Berliner makes about 250 cases of Chardonnay, 200 of Cabernet Sauvignon and 50 of Malbec (it can be much lower – there was less than half that in 2022) – that’s pretty good value. We meet downstairs at Hedonism in London’s Berkeley Square. ‘There he is!’ Berliner says, as if it’s me who’s the celebrity. He’s compact, fit-looking and energetic; from the moment we sit down, he barely draws breath in his urge tell the story of what he calls ‘the most improbable project ever.’ A restless entrepreneur who grew up in New York and moved to New England, Berliner has run a Patagonia-style sustainable clothing business, a Whole Foods-style grocery and a futon business. He’s made schlocky feature films (‘they weren’t super successful’). He built a company, sold it, built another and so on. In 2003, he and his wife Alison Jobson (who is Australian) bought 100ha at Wilyabrup in Margaret River because they loved it and wanted to retire there. The estate was virgin land (though Wilyabrup is full of illustrious estates: Pierro, Moss Wood, Cullen, Vasse Felix) and he says he had no intention of making wine; he might plant a row or two to sell the grapes. Then he caught the bug. A friend – ‘a big New York restaurateur’ – taught him to taste and he got ‘turned on’ to Bordeaux (‘only the Left Bank’). He put himself through a night-school degree in viticulture and enology at UC Davis, and, in 2005, planted a pocket-handkerchief sized plot, one-fifth of a hectare of Cabernet Sauvignon. He was mentored at first by Stuart Watson and his father David, founder of Woodlands Wines in Wilyabrup. ‘I’m ever grateful to him. He’s brilliant and open-minded,’ Berliner says, before adding (with characteristic modesty), ‘but it took someone with my disposition and background to take it to this level.’He now makes the wines himself, from a slightly bigger vineyard – 1.25ha of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and 10% Malbec, from which he makes hobbyist amounts of single-vineyard bottlings.When he pours the Chardonnay, I’m expecting something pretty good but somehow not so delicate (it’s not an adjective I’d use for the stocky New Yorker sitting opposite me). There is nothing showy about Cloudburst. The Cabernet is perfumed and delicately tannin-ed, the Chardonnay restrained. They are complex, structured and elegant, the fine work of someone striving for that holy grail of sense-of-place. It took someone with my disposition and background to take it to this level You meet winemakers like this on every continent and each has their own way of articulating this elusive ambition. For Berliner, it’s a Gaia-like concept of oneness with the earth. ‘My life energy has always been about being in nature,’ he says. Cloudburst, he recently told a magazine, ‘is driven by very different considerations than those of my neighbours. It is cultivated differently from any other vineyard in the world.’ Over the years, he’s said a few things that might be thought foolhardy for a fast-talking American in Australia. When I put this to him, he looks for a moment like a 14-year-old unfairly accused of pinching his dad’s cigarettes. ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to,’ he says. How about the idea you’re working to a different rhythm to everyone else? This gets us into a discussion of tall-poppy syndrome, the peculiarly Aussie mechanism by which anyone who puts on airs gets quickly cut down to size. ‘I have been tall-poppied,’ he admits. Some people in Margaret River were threatened by him, he goes on. ‘It’s a normal human characteristic for people to react in a certain way. I understand that, and part of me is very forgiving. But others realise there is great value in having an estate that’s absolutely pure and so small that it demonstrates something. And what we demonstrate is instructive for those who are willing to take a moment and listen.’ And Berliner’s neighbours seem to have got over his tall-poppyness. ‘Will nurtures the wine with his unique personality and it eventuates in Cloudburst as a unique expression of Margaret River,’ Virginia Willcox, head winemaker at Vasse Felix, told me by email. Were his neighbours annoyed by some of his comments? ‘I would hope that all growers have some different considerations to their neighbours. Will is unusually connected to his property and does things his way based on what he feels his plants require.’ The most critical I’ve heard is an off-the-record comment that ‘he’s not a team player.’His farming methods – own-rooted, dry-grown vines, no tilling, wild-yeast ferment in open barrels, no racking or stirring – are not that unusual for a modern artisan wine, but he was ahead of the game when he planted. No-dig mulching, for example, wasn’t that much in vogue in 2005. ‘I did nothing to the soil before I planted. I put down good quality cover crops but basically all I did was poke holes in the ground and stick [in the root]. And sometimes that worked, sometimes you’d have a root that made it on top of a rock and dried up. So there’s a differential from gnarly vines to very skinny vines.’ I care about making a little bit of something extraordinary Many gifted winemakers find it difficult to explain what they are trying to do. Some take recourse in mystical hocus-pocus, others skewer their audience with opaque science. Anyone who ever listened to the late Serge Hochar of Château Musar explaining his white wines will know what I mean.I imagine he got into wine in the same way he got into all his other ventures: learn the subject and do it better than anyone else. But if it had been just that, he’d be farming a lot more than 1.25ha now. He insists he’s not in it for the money, and I believe him. ‘This little bit takes all of me. I don’t give a shit about scaling. I care about making a little bit of something extraordinary. And the thing that has distinguished us, for our customers, is that they get a piece of something that tastes extraordinary.’And so he reaches for a bottle and pours me a glass that is – yes – extraordinary. Explore our full selection of available Cloudburst wines

In this 2025 article for Club Oenologique, Will Berliner talks to Adam Lechmere about arriving in Margaret River with no intention of making wine, producing some of its most expensive cuvées, being ahead of the game and getting ‘tall-poppied’ by the locals.

Will Berliner talks to Adam Lechmere in Club Oenologique’s 2025 article about his Margaret River journey and producing some of its most expensive wines.

The most improbable project ever:Will Berliner on Cloudburst

‘The most improbable project ever’: Will Berliner on Cloudburst

There are times when you put a question to a winemaker and he puffs out his cheeks and rubs his chin and you know he’s thinking, ‘Journalists.’ When I ask Promontory’s David Cilli what exactly is meant by ‘interpretation of terroir’, he courteously describes the process of trying to get the wine to reflect the character of the land. But he gives the impression my question was like quizzing Monet on how he got his effects. If you don’t get it, you probably won’t. The character of Promontory, on the day I visit, is quite something. It’s early May and the rain, which has been falling steadily all night, has turned to a lashing downpour that has raindrops bouncing six inches off the windscreen. We’re in a jeep piloted by winegrowing director Cory Empting and since turning off the main road we’ve been climbing steadily through dripping stands of oak with pocket-handkerchief vineyards between them. ‘Shall we stay in the car?’ asks Empting. ‘If we could,’ Will Harlan suggests from the back seat. I’m here with Empting, Cilli and Harlan. Bill Harlan has appeared briefly but I don’t see him again until we sit down to taste. He formally handed over control of Harlan Estate, Promontory, Bond and The Mascot in 2021, appointing 37-year-old Will managing director. Cilli (44) arrived in 2012 and is in charge of vineyard and winemaking at Promontory. Promontory is an 840-acre fastness, a deep valley folded into the foothills of Mount Veeder, on the west side of the Napa Valley. From the highway, you think the looming ridge you’re looking at is the edge of Sonoma. But there’s another ridge beyond and between them this interesting domain. It’s remote, even by Napa standards (contrary to opinion, there are plenty of wild spaces in the county). The ultra-refined French Laundry is a couple of miles away but it might be in Wisconsin for all the relevance it has up here. Bill Harlan had come upon it hiking in the 1980s. ‘I used the Carmelite monastery [we’d passed it on the way up] as a base and just started climbing’. There were no vines but he was intrigued by its seclusion. It might be possible vineland for the Napa project he had in mind. In the end, Harlan Estate was founded less than a mile to the north but for 25 years Harlan kept the idea of that parcel tucked under his hat (he never mentioned it, Will says) before it came on the market in 2007 and he snapped it up. "Vineyards, some a mere half-acre, are etched into towering, wooded hillsides and drop down into cavernous combes dense with oak and fir" The owner – the Harlans don’t reveal who that is – had planted 80-odd acres of Cabernet Sauvignon. It was neglected, the vines overgrown. Trees had been felled and never collected. ‘It was a mess,’ Will says. ‘It looked like a logging operation.’ But it is magnificent. Vineyards, some a mere half-acre, are etched into towering, wooded hillsides and drop down into cavernous combes dense with oak and fir. The whole estate is thickly forested, the vines often shaded on three sides. An old drovers’ road, running through the woods, will suddenly open out on a wide vista of vineyard and scree. Everything is deeply, lushly green in the steadily falling spring rain. The geology of the land is unusual, in that it rests on two distinct fault lines and consists of all three soil types that are found in Napa: volcanic, sedimentary and metamorphic. ‘You get all three in the same soil pit,’ Cilli notes. This, combined with the wild variation in aspect and the microclimate of the valley-within-a-valley, gives credence to Harlan’s claims that this part of Napa is like nowhere else in California. When the celebrated soil scientists Claude and Lydia Bourguignon came, they found the experience ‘novel’. Cilli said he fell in love with Promontory at first sight. It reminded him, in part, of his native Tuscany, but it was the wildness that captivated him, ‘I love that character that you can see in the wines.’ He said it was probably ‘the only project that could keep me in the valley.’ You get the impression none of them can quite believe their luck. ‘It somehow redefined what looks beautiful,’ Will says. It also redefined their ideas of winemaking. He goes on: ‘We were used to control. Harlan in the 1990s was obsessed with organisation and uniformity but Promontory was wild.’ The theme of wildness recurs. Harvest times are key to ‘find a way for it to come through,’ Will says. Empting: ‘Pick too late and you lose the ruggedness.’ Ageing, in the magnificent Howard Backen-designed chai, is all in Stockinger Austrian oak barrels ranging in size from 10,000 to 46,000 litres, for up to 36 months. ‘The fine-yet-tight tannins required longer barrel-ageing but [we] didn’t want the wine to be overpowered by new oak’. It’s a constant process of refinement and improvement – ‘we learn something new each season’. Empting: ‘It has blown every expectation out of the water. We were excited and we were scared. We didn’t know what this beast would be. Our learning curve has been very steep, it remains very steep. At least now we’re starting to get our arms around it but at the beginning, it was like: God, we cannot figure this thing out.” "I found in the 2016 a moment where the various elements come together: the savoury nose, the fine tannins, the weight without heaviness" You have to remember we’re talking about winemaking here, not Wittgenstein. But ‘interpretation of terroir’, if it’s to mean anything at all, should be taken seriously. I’ve seen vineland all over the world – rock-strewn fields in the Andean foothills, rainless Spanish deserts – but I’ve never seen anything like Promontory. Were I to be tasked with bottling the soul of that vineyard, I’d reach for metaphor as well. And so we come to the missing shade of blue. This is the concept propounded by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, that an idea can be formulated without a previous sensory impression to give rise to it. He asked, Could a shade of blue missing from a spectrum be imagined by an observer? Harlan says (with a smile – he does have a degree in philosophy) that Promontory is the missing shade of red. ‘Until you’ve seen and experienced it, you don’t know that it’s missing. And so for us this was that final piece. The piece that wasn’t there that we had the opportunity to understand and try to translate into the wine.’ The next morning, in gorgeous May sunshine, we gather to taste. It’s almost the same group, though smaller, that did the mighty vertical of Harlan estate from magnum in 2020. Bill Harlan is there (he sweetly thanks the team for allowing him to taste, saying it’s the first full vertical of Promontory he’s ever done), Will, Empting, Cilli and the journalist Elaine Brown. We wonder, at the end, if there is thread that runs through the wines. In my notes the words ‘deceptively light’ recur, as do ‘structure’ and ‘stone’. Reaching for metaphor again, Will Harlan compares the structure of the 2016 to cathedral stone, which has ‘both weight and lightness. It’s intricately carved and light filters through the windows.’ I found in the 2016 a moment where the various elements come together: the savoury nose, the fine tannins, the weight without heaviness. Will Harlan calls this vintage an ‘inflection point’ and notes how the tannins are the ‘main differentiators’. Yes, agrees Cilli, ‘and because of the character of levity and lift, we have to be precise with the tannins.’ The younger vintages have an astonishing latent energy, tannins under tight rein, aromas bursting, the fruit compacted. Brown and I were struck not by the sophistication of these wines but by their honesty. Brown WhatsApped me later. ‘Promontory is the most transparent to place. The wines are impressively well crafted and elegant while still offering an almost wild or primal complex of flavours.’ "The wines are unmistakeably Californian but they are also unlike anything I’ve tasted in Napa" ‘How do we take wine from a wilderness and have sophistication?’ Will asked. It’s a great question – with their resources, the Harlans could do anything they liked with Promontory. After all, they have to make a wine that will please their audience. But this was so unexpected. The tasting revealed a keen focus on the land and the vintage. The difference between the years was often marked – the challenge of 2015 for example showed in the wine – yet we could see that common thread running through, even as the wines increased in elegance. And what of Will’s quest for the missing shade of red? The wines are unmistakeably Californian – that splendid 2017 could come from nowhere else – but they are also unlike anything I’ve tasted in Napa, which is quite a claim, in the world’s most cultivated wine region. Perhaps the last word should go to Bill Harlan, who started the whole thing. He speaks hardly at all during the tasting, his Old Testament face giving little away. At the end of the morning, he talks of his fascination with the ‘ongoing discovery’ of the project. The wines have character, layers and depth, he says, and – by way of praising their authenticity – he notes, ‘You never know what’s coming next.’

Written for Club Oenologique, contributor Adam Lechmere visits California to trace the evolution of Promontory, one of Napa’s most magnificent sites, with a vertical tasting of 14 vintages revealing the wild beauty, elegance and remarkable evolution of its wines.

Written for Club Oenologique, contributor Adam Lechmere visits California to trace the evolution of Promontory, one of Napa’s most magnificent sites.

Wildness captured: tasting 14 vintages of Promontory

The old adage about necessity being the mother of invention springs readily to mind when you hear the story of Jean-Luc Pasquet. In 1970, he took over a Cognac vineyard at Chez Ferchaud, a few kilometres southwest of Châteauneuf-sur-Charente, from his uncle Albert Brisson. Things got off to an excellent start. The weather was glorious and the 1970 harvest was abundant – ideal when your business model is predicated on selling to the big Cognac houses that dominate the industry. Life, in other words, was good. But then came the oil crisis and a downturn that badly affected trade in Cognac, prompting Jean-Luc to think again. Amy Pasquet, his daughter-in-law, takes up the story. ‘He said, “I have some really unique terroir; I’m going to make my own label,”’ she explains. And so, in 1977, Cognac Jean-Luc Pasquet was born. Soon, Jean-Luc’s Cognacs were picked out and praised by a German journalist, prompting interest from Germany, Sweden and the UK – and the company, today run by Amy and her husband, Jean-Luc’s son Jean, hasn’t looked back since. Cognac is replete with individuals like Jean-Luc Pasquet. Often they are the unseen drones of a multibillion-euro industry, toiling in vineyard, winery, distillery and cellar to fuel the engines of the quartet of titans that dominate global trade: Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin and Courvoisier. But to those in the know, they shine a new and very different light on a corner of rural France that continues to produce the finest brandy in the world. ‘Cognac is so artisanal when you go outside of [the big four houses],’ says Amy. ‘I think a lot of people coming from the world of Scotch and other spirits think it’s kind of boring. But you have 250 artisanal brands with their own vines – it’s a joy to explore.’ Cognac is so artisanal when you go outside of the big four houses – it’s a joy to explore – Amy Pasquet As well as being the source of high-quality, excellent-value and sometimes downright quirky Cognacs, these small producers provide enthusiasts with no shortage of fascinating rabbit holes of flavour and provenance down which they can happily vanish. They are the antithesis of the blended VS, VSOP and XO bottlings that dominate shelves and back bars from Shanghai to San Francisco. Jean-Luc Pasquet’s vineyards – 15ha (37 acres) now, spanning the Grande and Petite Champagne crus – are all farmed organically, which is no small feat in this Atlantic-influenced, notoriously humid part of western France. The Pasquets rely heavily on weather stations and apps to ensure the vines get the right treatment at the right time. ‘Our two vineyards are only 5km [3 miles] apart but they have very different microclimates,’ says Amy. As if organics didn’t make life difficult enough, the Pasquets are also huge fans of Folle Blanche, the grape variety that dominated the pre-phylloxera Cognac vineyards but has fallen heavily out of favour since, on account of being fiendishly difficult to farm. (About 98% of Cognac plantings are now Ugni Blanc.) An annual JL Pasquet bottling of a 10-year-old cask of Folle Blanche is a perennial highlight. Jean-Luc Pasquet set up his business as a négociant; this meant he could bottle other people’s Cognacs, as well as his own, though he had no need to do so in the early years. In 2018, however, demand was such that the company ran out of its own aged stock. What resulted was L’Esprit de Famille, later renamed Trésors de Famille single-cask bottlings of Cognacs produced by small grower-distillers – known as bouilleurs de cru. It began with Le Cognac de Bernadette, a 1974 Cognac from Bouteville in Grande Champagne, and it has continued with bottlings of Le Cognac de Paul, Claude and André-all namechecking the producers in question. ‘For me, all of these vintners are the unsung heroes of Cognac’, says Amy Pasquet. ‘They’re selling to big houses, making really fine products and never getting any credit.’ It’s one thing to know that there are many dozens of small producers out there, but quite another to be able to track down their Cognacs, short of conducting your own painstaking tour, cellar door by cellar door, of the Charente region. Here specialist retailers such as The Whisky Exchange are a great place to start, unlike the multiples, they take the trouble and have the space to stock a much broader range of smaller producers and interesting bottles. If this were Scotch whisky, of course, enthusiasts on a quest for obscure single malts would turn to independent bottlers but that concept is far less common in Cognac. The superb selection offered by David Baker’s Hermitage Cognacs has long been an exception to this rule, as are the releases of Cognac Sponge from bottler Decadent Drinks, then there’s Through The Grapevine (TTG), an independent bottling offshoot of French retailer La Maison du Whisky in association with Italian importer Velier. Now managed by Antoine Bouchard, TTG was revamped two years ago, with Bouchard setting out to create a rolling annual release programme of single-cask Cognacs spanning from the 1930s to the 1990s in colour-coded bottles designating the region’s different crus. Unlike most Cognac operators, TTG encourages its partners to minimise any reduction in alcohol, everything is geared to reject homogeneity. ‘The idea of TTG is to unearth the “hidden gems” of the region, not to go towards the big four like Hennessy – although they’re doing a great job, don’t get me wrong’, says Bouchard. ‘We want to emphasise that the big brands are blending subregions, thus erasing, in a way, the identity of the grape and the distillate. Instead, we want to focus on how the soil influences the final product.’ The result, in the most recent round of TTG releases, is an eclectic selection of idiosyncratic Cognacs. There’s everything from a benchmark Grande Champagne from Jean Fillioux (Lot 63, signifying a blend of mainly 1963 eaux de vie with a little 1965) to a totally out-of-the-box Château de Beaulon 1988 Fins Bois. Created by the remarkable Christian Thomas in the far south of the region, close to the Gironde Estuary, it’s bottled at a muscular 55.2% ABV and eschews the ubiquitous Ugni Blanc for a unique blend of obscure grape varieties: Colombard, Montils, Folle Blanche and Folignan. If Beaulon waves the flag for Fins Bois, TTG’s remarkable Mauxion 45 (yes, 45 as in 1945) does the same for the often overlooked Bons Bois cru – although it’s sadly out of stock now. ‘It’s really about showing that there is no subregion inherently better than another’, says Bouchard. ‘To me, Bons Bois Cognacs are amazing and it’s such a shame that Grande Champagne is seen as the greatest cru.’ While a terroir-focused, provenance-rich approach to Cognac remains predominantly the preserve of smaller operators, others are taking note. Delamain – a specialist in long-aged Cognacs of XO grade and above – is now managing its own Grande Champagne vineyard, as is Hine. And Frapin, with its 240ha (600-acre) estate at Château de Fontpinot, has always been rooted in the soil surrounding its vines. Drinkers around the globe are changing and Cognac – ever so slowly – is changing with them The largest operators remain predominantly focused on their core VS, VSOP and XO blends, but the philosophy is shifting here, too. ‘For me, the approach for Cognac has to be much more precise, like the grands crus we have for our wine regions in France,’ says Baptiste Loiseau, cellar master at Rémy Martin. ‘We see more and more small producers going with much more information on the label.’ In 2022, Loiseau released Rémy Martin L’Étape in France, a 7,000-bottle release that blended 14 eaux de vie sourced from growers across Grande and Petite Champagne who have achieved HVE (High Environmental Value) certification – complete with a paper wrapper featuring grower testimonials, a map and a QR code for more information. Rémy Martin Tercet, meanwhile, highlights the respective roles of wine grower, distiller and blender. At Martell, cellar master Christophe Valtaud has created the Martell Single Cru Collection – a six-strong range of Cognacs including three Discovery Edition products (Petite Champagne, Borderies, Fins Bois), two Aged Editions (Grande Champagne XO, Borderies XXO) and one Vintage Edition (Borderies 1999). As well as showcasing Martell’s signature Borderies origin, these Cognacs challenge preconceptions, particularly the younger Discovery Edition trio. ‘Before tasting, people think that the Petite Champagne will be the best, but the best Cognac at this stage and the biggest pleasure to drink is the Fins Bois,’ explains Valtaud. ‘Fins Bois eaux de vie find balance more quickly than Petite Champagne, which is more spicy and a little bit less easy to drink. People think that Fins Bois and Bons Bois are not the best, but it’s not always the case.’ Drinkers around the globe are changing and Cognac – ever so slowly – is changing with them. ‘In England, America and China, I see the new generation wanting to know what the size of the cask is, or how many bottles we produced in this special vintage,’ says Delamain cellar master Charles Braastad. ‘I think that this is our time; the world has become more informed and more interested. People just want to know what it is that they are drinking.’

In this 2024 article for Club Oenologique, Richard Woodard speaks to Cognac’s foremost innovators to find out how times are changing for the spirit – propelled by a particular focus on provenance.

In this 2024 article for Club Oenologique, Richard Woodard speaks to Cognac’s foremost innovators to find out how times are changing for the spirit.

Reimagining Cognac from the ground up

Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard and Founding Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review, was inspired by a student to combine wine and statistics—leading to insights far beyond what they ever expected.

From wine tastings to data science, Xiao-Li Meng explores how statistics reveals simplicity in complexity – one glass, experiment, and insight at a time.

Wine, statistics & serendipity: A Harvard journey

Seeking simplicity in statistics, complexity in wine, and everything else in fortune cookies 

It is hard to imagine The Balvenie without David Stewart MBE and vice versa. The story of each one is so entwined with the other that it’s nigh on impossible to unpick where one starts and the other ends. Since joining William Grant & Sons in 1962 as a whisky stocks clerk, Stewart has gone on to become of the most well-known and respected names in the Scotch whisky industry. He is, for many, the pioneer of cask finishing, and his achievements are far too numerous to list. When the incredibly humble man “hangs up his boots” after a 57-year-plus career, Kelsey McKechnie will become the youngest-ever female Malt Master. “Everyone always jokes and says do I feel the pressure and what does it feel like getting into a role like this. There definitely is an element of pressure around it but it’s funny, you really don’t feel it. I enjoy this role and I love being here. I’ve been very lucky, so I’m saying ‘let’s ride it out for as long as we can’,” the 29-year-old says with unfettered excitement. The Malt Master role is a very different one today than it was in the 1960s, something McKechnie and William Grant & Sons Master Blender Brian Kinsman continually rib Stewart about. “Obviously, way back in the ’60s we had very little to nose,” Stewart says in a flash. When he joined the family-owned business under Master Blender and Balvenie Malt Master Hamish Robertson, Glenfiddich and The Balvenie weren’t being bottled as single malts and Grant’s Standfast blend was the company’s bread and butter. Today, the triumvirate nose samples from Ailsa Bay, Girvan Distillery, Kininvie, Glenfiddich and The Balvenie. From the new-make spirit to mature samples, bottling runs to all the vat samples, everything produced at the William Grant distilleries in Scotland and Ireland passes under the noses of Kinsman, McKechnie and Stewart. This equates to approximately 40-50 Scotch, Irish whiskey, Bourbon and rum samples per day. There are a number of parallels in Stewart and McKechnie’s stories, which they don’t even seem to realise. Both started in very different roles and eyed an interesting opportunity to nose spirits. Through serendipity and, one suspects, a tremendous amount of inherent skill and hard graft, the two found their way into the nosing lab. And once faced with row upon row of whisky samples, the pair knew in an instant that they found their calling. “I always say I have been very lucky,” McKechnie says. “I’m such a firm believer in timing. I came into the team at a time when I had built up enough technical process skills to understand how whisky is produced and carry out analysis, and do all these different things and apply it to blending.” In 2018, Kinsman and Stewart approached 26-year-old McKechnie to ask if she would be interested in learning all things regarding Balvenie and eventually moving into the Malt Master role. She’d been with the company for almost four years at this time, working her way from the lab to the whisky stocks team, from the Lowlands to the beating heart of the business in Speyside. So, what does it take to become a Malt Master and what did the two whisky patriarchs see in the young female scientist at the infancy of her whisky career? According to Stewart, one of the biggest things is the nosing aspect. “We can identify what’s right and what’s not, just by nosing the whisky,” he says. “And that’s what takes the time to learn.” Stewart had already been through the process of training a successor with Brian Kinsman from 2001 to 2010. It might be hard for some to fathom why this apprenticeship takes the best part of a decade, but so much of the role is about instinct and the finest of margins. In the same way Robertson brought in samples for Stewart – albeit not quite as many – all those years before, Stewart to this day brings in spirit samples for Kinsman and McKechnie. “Really, it’s nosing together; pointing out things,” Stewart adds. “I bring in samples from different cask types and different ages. Brian just worked with me and gradually he took over and I was doing less and less.” When asked if she thinks she has a natural gift, McKechnie says it’s curiosity above anything else that’s required to be a good noser. “I think everybody just needs to be curious enough to want to nose. Most often – apart from a few people where it is genetic and there’s one reason or another that they don’t have a sense of smell – I actually think so many people will be fantastic nosers.” And the difference between Joe Bloggs and the youngest-ever female Malt Master? The word association piece, according to McKechnie. “So often we’ll see when people are starting up that they can nose something and they can say ‘this is different’. So we do difference nosing. We have one glass and we’re just nosing it against another and saying ‘pick up the difference or not’ – it’s often easy for people but they can’t put into play what they can pick up.” Like any other skill, McKechnie says it takes years of practice and fine tuning. “It’s like using a different language,” she says. “To remain fluent, you need to continually keep nosing and to be able to relate those words to what you’re picking up in nose and taste. I actually think everyone has a gift, if that’s what you want to call it, or the ability to do it. It’s just about really working out what flavour this is and what do we call it.” Sometimes tasting notes for spirits and wines can be a little, shall we say, creative. For this reason, at William Grant & Sons, free words are banned. “We’re really strict about what people can call the different spirits,” McKechnie explains. “It could be too easy for somebody to say ‘this smells like a walk in the park’ and we can find ourselves in a bit of a pickle.” When starting out, as a professional or merely an appreciator of spirits, this word association piece can be a barrier, according to McKechnie, but it shouldn’t be. “There is no need for whisky to be intimidating at all,” she says. “For me, I think it’s because people are so passionate about it. It gets everyone a little bit puffed up – I’m guilty of it as well. But there really is no need for it at all because it really is such an open area that there isn’t one strict answer so I’ll always say that to people – if you are new to it, make sure you get lots of water in there because whisky is just such a flavour bomb. I think people don’t really know what they’re nosing because there are 50-100 different flavours coming at you at once.” So, do the three professional nosers ever disagree? “Because I’ve only ever learned to nose and blend from David who has learned from Brian and vice versa, we don’t often butt heads or have a difference of opinion –  but it does happen,” McKechnie says with a coy smile. Rather than being daunted by the spectre of the longest-serving Malt Master and Kinsman – who has racked up a fairly daunting 24 years in role – McKechnie seems energised by the legacy and is visibly thrilled at the prospect of one day imparting this knowledge to her own apprentice. “I think it would be a massive compliment to be able to give someone the knowledge you have gained,” she says. “I really like the thought of actually one day being able to train someone.” When it comes to the future at The Balvenie, McKechnie says they have “many things bubbling away in the warehouses” and they have “a few more Balvenies tucked up our sleeves”. But, on a personal note, “it’s working with Brian and David day-in-day-out and gaining more of the understanding about what makes Balvenie so unique. Understanding more around the stock model and that 50-year horizon and ensuring that I’ve got the skills to make sure the next 50 years is looking good and that we’re not laying down all the wrong things.” The Balvenie maintains a lot of the traditional whisky-making traditions. It is the only Scotch whisky distillery to grow its own barley, use traditional floor maltings and keep coppersmiths and coopers on site. Rather than being gilded handcuffs, these ties to traditions allow the team to experiment at the point of distillation and Stewart has spearheaded a number of trials that have come from the maltings throughout his career. “I think if there is one thing that David has ever taught me, it’s about how important innovation is,” McKechnie says. “We always talk about the fact we’re the home of cask finishing. It was something that was second nature in David’s role until people started calling it innovation. “And it’s something that we always want to pass on. We’re constantly thinking about what’s next and how can we do something unique and what exciting things we have in the distillery that we could release and bring to everyone. “Obviously the Scotch Whisky Association is pretty strict, in a good way, so that no-one is going to mimic us, but we also like to push the boundaries a little bit and say, what can we really get away with here?” With a glint in her eye and an unmistakable enthusiasm in her voice, you can’t help but feel The Balvenie, when it comes to honouring tradition and driving innovation, is in very safe hands for the next 50 years and beyond. Browse all whisky or read more Editorial

David Stewart MBE is the longest-serving Malt Master. Kelsey McKechnie is the youngest female Malt Master Apprentice. Holly Motion speaks to the two Balvenie record-breakers about passing the baton, the weight of a legacy, and what it really means to lay down stocks for the next generation

Balvenie's longest-serving Malt Master David Stewart MBE and his successor Kelsey McKechnie on upholding tradition while driving innovation at the distillery.

The Balvenie, making of a master

The Balvenie: the making of a master

The skyline of the medieval village of Saint-Emilion is dominated by the spire of its 12th century monolithic church. Hewn from the limestone rock that imbues its wines with their shape and sinew, the 68-metre high belfry surveys the vineyards that cover its plateau and slopes. But it is not the only 12th-century edifice that stands tall among the green carpet of vines: Château Laroque has its own medieval tower, a reminder of its long and somewhat tumultuous past. The latest chapter in Laroque’s history is still being written, but – for wine-lovers – it could be the most exciting yet. Praise has been heaped on Château Laroque recently, with Vinous founder Antonio Galloni even claiming it “may well be the single most-improved wine in Saint-Emilion over the last few years” and that’s due in no small part to its dynamic director, David Suire.  Despite having worked in Saint-Emilion since 2002, Suire is part of the next generation charged with guiding the appellation in the coming decades. Although he only arrived in 2015, he’s already making waves at this historic estate. Happily ensconced at Premier Grand Cru Classé Châteaux Larcis-Ducasse and Beauséjour-Duffau, Suire had not been looking for a new job – but the owners of Laroque, the Beaumartin family, had their eyes on him. He agreed to replace retiring winemaker Bruno Sainson, but on strict conditions: “I knew the estate and its potential, but I would only join if the owners had the ambition to make a wine that reflected the quality of the terroir.”                                                  He requested a soil study of the vineyard, which is no mean feat considering it is the appellation’s biggest estate at a massive 61 hectares (the average holding is a mere eight hectares). “Bruno knew everything about the terroir. He was a very clever man, but my parents’ generation didn’t do analysis of the soil nor in the cellar; it was a question of feeling. I knew I could not wait 10 years to understand everything at Laroque and that’s why I asked for the study,” Suire explained. Armed with the results, there was no sudden change, but with 75% of the vineyards dating back to the 1950s and ’60s, Suire has created a replanting programme that will outlast his working years. The more immediate changes that have had wine critics drooling have come from tweaks in the winery. “I’m working on more precision,” he says. “I was allowed to make my own selection in the blend so it is slightly different. I chose the oldest vines from parts of the plots that best express the limestone.” In an effort to achieve greater elegance and delicacy, pump overs have now been restricted to the early part of the fermentation. The gentle process of plunging – pigeage – is preferred. “For me, the aim of pigeage is to have homogeneity in the ferments rather than extracting tannins. I just want to liberate the cap.” He’s also decided that the top wine will consist solely of free-run juice and no press wine, which tends to be harsher. Suire has also adjusted the estate’s use of maturation vessels depending on the terroir. The lighter texture of wines from the limestone plateau and slopes now spend their adolescence in wooden tanks, foudres and one-year-old Bordeaux barrels, rather than new oak. He explains: “When you have Cabernet on clay, you need a Bordeaux barrel, with Merlot on limestone you need to treat it like a white grape. We don’t need to polish the tannins because we have no press wine and limestone.” The changes are already paying off, with the world’s key critics finding lots to like and higher scores reflecting the upswing in quality, vindicating the Beaumartins’ decision to recruit Suire. In a short space of time, this historic property has forged a new path that could take it to towering new heights in the coming decade. Find out more about Château Laroque or read more Editorial 

Since David Suire’s arrival in 2015, Château Laroque has become one of Saint-Emilion’s most talked-about estates. We caught up with the man behind the modest property’s soaring reputation (and scores) to find out more

David Suire on how he is transforming one of Saint-Emilion’s most talked-about estates, Château Laroque, into a top-scoring property

Carving a new future at Laroque Saint-Emilion 

Carving a new future at Laroque

At Lafite Rothschild, Antoine Granger said that while vintages like 1986 (“rich but good”), 1990 and 1996 are drinking well, the 2000 is “beautiful” and the 2005 “brilliant”.  It might be young, but – if you can decant it 12 hours in advance – the more modest 2022 Duhart-Milon is also showing well, he noted. Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse also pointed to 2000 (a “fabulous” vintage) at Beauséjour, while she finds that some 2004s are superb. She also recently had tasted 2005 Latour and said it was “magnifique”.   For Pierre-Olivier Clouet at Cheval Blanc, 2004 is a vintage he loves. The 1998 is drinking very well, he noted, but the 2009 and 2012 are brilliant – having never shut down, something echoed elsewhere. He’s just starting to broach the 2007, a wine which he says was “a teenager” for a long time but is now starting to reveal its potential. The 2012 is also, for him, a new sort of 2011.  Palmer’s Sébastien Menut was another to point to 2007 – saying how well it was drinking, and a recent bottle of 2014 Trotanoy was a real standout bottle for him.   For Juliette Couderc, the 2009 and 2012 Evangile are still winners – although there isn’t that much left around, sadly; she likes the 2008 too, but feels the 2004 and 2005 aren’t yet ready, while vintages like 2016, 2018, 2019 need more time before broaching. Indeed, at Vieux Château Certan, Alexandre Thienpont pointed to 2009 (a vintage he feels is just starting to open up – reenforced by a bottle our team enjoyed in Bordeaux during primeurs) and the 2012 is drinking well.  David Suire at Ch. Laroque is happy to uncork almost any vintage between 1995 and 2020, he told us (anything older requires a special occasion, he joked), but highlighted the 2014 as a wine that is starting to open up, and – although still young – the 2019 is a very fine wine that is brilliant, it just needs decanting. And he’s not the only one to be enjoying the 2019s: Troplong Mondot’s Ferréol du Fou has been drinking the 2019 a lot, decanting it for an hour or two, while he was also particularly enthusiastic about the 2017s – wines which he feels are drinking well from across Bordeaux.  At La Conseillante, Marielle Cazaux echoed this – the 2019 is pure pleasure, for her, a “silky, delicious fruit bomb” at this youthful stage, and the 2017 is similarly rewarding. Looking back a bit further, she’s still waiting for the 2015 to emerge, but loves the 2012 – which combines tertiary complexity with power.   Shop the wines or read more about the region 

All eyes may currently be on the nascent 2024s, but in amongst primeurs, we took a moment to talk to Bordeaux’s top producers about the vintages to drink now. Here’s what those in the know are pulling the cork on

As the 2024 vintage is released en primeur, we asked Bordeaux’s top produces which vintages are best to drink now: here’s what they said 

Bordeaux: the best vintages and wines to drink now 

Bordeaux vintages to drink now  

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 

David Arthur

United States

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