By: Pat Nolan, Editor, Drinks Industry Ireland
The restless innovator is not content with making a fortune in one walk of life but has to go on and start all over again in another. Through gritted-teeth perseverence and by gripping that learning curve ever more tightly when failure comes around the first few times, the restless innovator goes on to make a thorough success of the second choice of career too. Makes ya sick!
And so it is with a number of winemakers in the Bordeaux region where fate appears to have plucked them from the vine in one walk of life to introduce them instead into the wonders of wine-making, imbuing them with a seemingly restless vigour and passion for making good wine – and with considerable skill and attention to detail to boot.
Martin Krajewski represents just such a person. He bought Chateau de Sours 10 years ago after a life in the City of London. Martin commenced a major upgrade of the winery with the purchase of new vineyards and the restoration of the Chateau and its grounds, replete with striking art gallery and equally striking underground cavern.
Having overcome many difficulties in getting the vineyard at Chateau de Sours up to present production levels, he was informed by his neighbours at Saint Emilion that his wines now had St Emilion potential!…. Phwoar! I don’t suppose you could ask for much more by way of a compliment for the ‘new boy’.
Chateau de Sours produces 420,000 bottles a year which Martin sells into 17 countries around the globe – that’s 17 countries “officially” speaking – but at the last count, he tells me, it could be found in no fewer than 30 countries ranging from Barbados to Australia, the US, Canada and even Japan. He doesn’t know quite how they got there, but it’s indicative of the quality of his product. So Martin hopes to up production to 600,000 bottles by 2010.
Apart from a house in London and a castle in Scotland (just to balance it all up) he also owns vineyards in Australia so he can rightly claim to have a winetreading foot in both the Old and the New World camps.
As a result, he’s been able to compare closely the French Appelation regime versus the more laissez-faire attitude taken to wine-making in Oz. His comparison of the two seems pithy and to the point.
“The French have lots of rules for their wines. In Australia there are no rules,” he concludes.
Not too far from him lives another restless innovator in Jonathan Maltus who was in the vanguard of the “garagiste” movment in the 1990s. This movement revolutionised winemaking in St Emilion.
Proprietor of Chateau Teyssier, Jonathan began again from scratch having sold his engineering business in 1994.
“It was certainly strange” he recalls, “to go from a situation where you had 560 employees in your company to having zero when I began again here”.
But by painstakingly learning the wine ropes, he developed an obsession with quality, low yields and modern techniques to craft small quantities of top quality wines from a quartet of vineyards that have enjoyed universal acclaim from the world’s top critics.
“Le Dome”, for example, the best-known of his range, consists of a blend of several plots. At the chateau, winemaking is conducted by Jonathan, Neil White and Gilles Pauquet of Cheval Blanc.
Le Dome can be got from suppliers here Gilbeys Wine who�d be looking for around €113 per bottle (for a case of 12).
Indeed Gilbeys Wines is the whole reason that we are all out in Bordeaux.
There could be little doubt that Gilbeys was going to celebrate its 150th Anniversary in style but few in the trade thought that it would mean a visit back to the roots of the company out in Bordeaux!
The outing for many of its best trade customers (as well as a few fortunate members of the press) begins with a visit to the Jaboulet-owned Chateau La Lagune for a wine tasting enjoined to a relaxed al fresco lunch.
Chateau La Lagune was classified as a Third growth in the 1855 Bordeaux classification of Medoc wines. Jean-Jacques Frey bought the property in 2000. His daughter Caroline qualified top of her class in oenology at Bordeaux University and it only seemed right and fitting that he handed control right across to her. Since then, millions have been spent upgrading the Chateau, its winemaking facilities and its vineyards.
The investment in the vineyards and cellar seems to be paying dividends with hugely increasing demand for the wine — not to mention critical acclaim from publications such as The Wine Advocate and The Wine Spectator.
Again, we can see enthusiasm and passion shining through Chateau La Lagune’s winelist including Madamoiselle L, Haut Medoc 2004 or Chateau La lagune, 3′eme Grand Cru Class, Haut Medoc 2001.
As Caroline herself puts it, “The most exciting thing in winemaking is winemaking”.
Gilbeys three-day trip draws to a close with a gala dinner at Chateau Magnol, the beautiful 18th Century chartreuse-style edifice which houses the headquarters of Barton & Guestier, the wine shipping firm founded in 1725 by Irishman Tom Barton and which, within 20 years, had become one of Bordeaux’s leading wine merchants.
Those of us who’d enjoyed a visit to the beautiful village of St Emilion and its famous underground monuments earlier in the day are spellbound by the evening’s proceedings. A meal matched to the wines of the region and a night to remember in Chateau Magnol, is topped off with a massive fireworks display attended by the aforementioned restless innovators.
Put me down for the 200th…….
