Falstaff Magazin International 00/2021

wine / BORDEAUX The

wine / BORDEAUX The barrique cellar at Château Latour where precious wines mature in perfect conditions. Right: Jean Thienpont and Eric Jeanneteau. Whenever you call Jan Thienpont on the telephone, the first thing you hear is the whistling of the wind. The winemaker and merchant is rarely found in his office and mostly in the vineyard. The 42-year-old tends the vines at Château Robin in the appellation of Côtes de Castillon and at Clos Fontaine in the appellation of Côtes de Francs – and makes wines at a price point of EUR 20 which are artisanal and absolutely solid refutations of the prejudice that Bordeaux wines are too expensive. But Thienpont is also an astute observer of planet Bordeaux. There is not a single aspect of the business he is not familiar with. Like more than 50 other members of the Thienpont family, he is co-owner of the legendary Pomerol property Vieux Château Certan, he also is a second nephew of both Alexandre Thienpont, head of VCC, and of Jacques Thienpont, the owner of cult estate Le Pin. Yet, at the broking business he runs with his brother Florian, he mainly distributes wines from far less exalted estates. The brothers’ wine range exemplifies a Bordeaux that is steeped in expertise and cultural awareness. It is exactly that kind of unflashy Bordeaux that was trammelled twice over the past 20 years: first it was deliberately ignored by the hype because it was neither blingy, exorbitant or excessive. Then later, when the hype turned into the backlash that is Bordeaux-bashing, this quieter side of Bordeaux was tarred with the same brush. THIENPONT IS AN ASTUTE OBSERVER OF PLANET BORDEAUX. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE ASPECT OF THIS BUSINESS HE IS NOT FAMILIAR WITH. HIDDEN TALENTS Bordeaux still has estates that fly below the radar. Xavier Piton’s is one such example. Striding across the gravel courtyard of his Château Belles-Graves, the art historian and oenologist leads the way to the small tasting room where the barrel samples of the 2020 vintage are waiting. Piton does not sell his wines via the Place de Bordeaux, the complex web of middlemen, and thus is not part of the usual en primeur business whereby collectors buy the wine two years before it is bottled and delivered. However, as vigneron independent, or independent winemaker, he has offered his clients the option of advance sales for years: they pay half the purchase price immediately and the balance upon delivery of the goods in two years’ time. Considering that a bottle clearly costs less than EUR 20, this is an attractive proposition. “I earn good money this way,“ Piton says with a smile and adjusts his statement: “Or rather, I should be saying that my parents made good money that way 30 years ago.“ Photos: provided 30 falstaff summer 2021

HE UNRAVELS A POSTER-SIZED PHOTOGRAPH THAT DEPICTS A GEOLOGICAL CROSS SECTION. Even before he pours the samples of the various parcels of his 17 hectare/43 acre estate, he unravels a poster-sized photograph that depicts a geological cross section. Below the uppermost layer of the name-giving gravels (graves) and loam, a reddish crasse de fer shows, a layer of loam rich in iron-oxide. Below that a layer of bluish loam and underneath that a further sandy layer with a reddish sheen. Belles-Graves is in the village of Néac and thus has the right to label its wines Lalande-de-Pomerol, but its soils are only slightly different from those of the celebrated plateau of Pomerol. No surprise really since there is just a little brook, the Barbanne, and a little greenery between Belle-Graves’ vineyards and the prized Pomerol site Le Gay – whose wines go for five times the price. Château Belles-Graves in the Lalande-de-Pomelrol appellation where Xavier Piton (below) makes his wines. A bottle of the 1949 vintage of the estate. Estates that do not make a huge fuss about their privileged sites and soils, like that of Xavier Piton, are not exactly plentiful in Bordeaux – yet more numerous than one might expect. There is, for instance, Clos Louie of Pascal and Sophie Lucin-Douteau. In the village of Saint-Philippe-d’Aiguille in Côtes de Castillon, they tend one of the last ungrafted vineyards of the region: 130- year-old vines, planted on limestone with a thin loam cover as a field blend before phylloxera devastated most vineyards. You taste exactly what these vines transported from the limestone to the grapes: a < summer 2021 falstaff 31