Day 1: Pessac-Leognan

The first recapitulation of my father and my packed trip to Bordeaux.

We started our trip with a day spent in Pessac-Leognan. For all the hype that wines from the Medoc, St. Emilion, and Pomerol get there are a number of great chateaux scattered in this area south of the city of Bordeaux. The chateaux here are older, and the region generally has more history. In Pessac, the great chateaux of Haut-Brion and Pape-Clement are literally to be found in the suburban sprawl of the city. If not for the exceptional terroir here and the corresponding price of the wine, there is little doubt that they too would have long ago been converted to housing, markets, and parking lots.

The Pessac-Leognan consists of two nearby areas in the northern most part of the Graves. The Pessac-Leognan appellation itself is on the younger side and is the result of years of effort expended by a number of producers, particularly the Lurton family, to distinguish the better wines of the area from the sea of mediocrity produced in much of the large Graves region. This is the reason why the better chateaux such as Smith-Haute-Lafitte and Carbonnieux still bear the title of Grand Cru Classe’ du Graves though they now lie within the Pessac-Leognan area.

For many years now, the red wines of the Graves and Pessac-Leognan have probably most contributed to the stereotype of tough wines lacking charm that has haunted lesser Bordelaise red-wine. In contrast, it is here that white Bordeaux reaches its most inspired form. The stony characteristics that, when combined with hard tannins, make its red wines hard to love sometimes contributes to the brightness and beauty of its best whites. The combination of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, and a touch of Muscadelle can make for wines of exotic and tropical beauty, with lovely spice components and mineral elements. It seemed an odd juxtaposition that Sunday to be tasting mango skin, mandarin orange, meyer lemon, and even traces of pineapple in limpid, cold, white wines as nearly frozen rain fell on defoliated vines and muddy vineyards outside.

There is an obsession with tannin in the red wines here. And I would argue that there should be. Those estates that are trying to up the level of quality here are doing all they can to handle red grapes more gently, be less extractive, use slightly higher toast oak, and even play around with things like micro-ox. I half-believe that the best Bordeaux consultants are just excellent tannin-managers. Michel Rolland, Denis Dubourdieu, Stephan Derenencourt are all texture sculptors as much as anything else, even if they have quite different personalities. At their best, the new wave of Pessac-Leognan producers are making better red wines now than have ever been made on their estates and the prices are remarkably reasonable. They never quite possess the power of Pauillac or some St. Julien wines, and they do not have the remarkable perfume and elegance of great Margaux. Rather, they share more with St. Estephe in their structure and aromatic profile. The worst, and we tasted some pretty hard wines, are still tougher than the street-kids in a Jacob Riis photo.

The Sunday that we visited the area corresponded with the Porte Ouvert weekend in the region. This is the one weekend a year where the chateaux open their doors to the public and allow them in to take a look around, taste, and buy some wines. aka. the New World everyday of the year. The upside of this is that we actually got to get into some chateaux on a Sunday– a day where much of France still closes down. The downside is that there lots of people, distracted managers, and the wines opened for the masses were generally those that still needed to be sold, i.e. the ones the negocients had not picked up yet.

Chateau de Fieuzal

We started the morning at Ch. de Fieuzal in Leognan. There we met with the manager, a M. Maligne who gave us a quick tour of the facility and tasted us on some of the wines already open for porte ouvert. It was a rather cursory over-view of the chateax and honestly was not particularily memorable. That it was still early in the morning and we were still a bit foggy from all the travel surely came into play as well.

Ch. Malartic-Lagraviere

Our next stop was Malartic-Lagraviere where we were given a lovely tour by Cecile Cazard and were later joined by the owners: M.Bonnie, his wife, and daughter. The family has invested considerably in the chateaux, completely rebuilding the tankroom and chaix, and bringing in Michel Rolland as a consultant. Red varietals are planted to 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot, with the balance being Cab Franc and Petit Verdot, though the exact percentage in the final wine can be quite different. Once grapes are brought in they go through two triages– one pre-destemming and one post-destemming– and are then deposited in whole berry form, via gravity, into a combination of stainless steel and wooden tanks. Extended macerations of 7-20 days are used prior to ml and barreling down. Here, like many other places, mL is partially undertaken in barrel. The resulting wines are excellent, and of great value. The 2004 and 2005 in particular show great richness of fruit and have excellent balance. I look forward to trying these wines again in a few years.

The white wine is typically about 80% Sauvignon Blanc and 20% Semillon. The whites of Malartic are reknowned for their longevity and it is easy to see why. Though the wines are less pronouncedly oaky than Smith-Haut-Lafitte or Chevalier they have serious taughtness and verve to them. The 2006 is tight as nails right now. Jancis Robinson is quick to point out that the whites here are best after six years of age and I believe her.

The Bonnie’s were really affable and quite frank in their discussion of the business side of the wine.

Ch. Smith-Haut-Lafitte

It was an absolute treat to spend the remainder of the morning at Smith-Haut- Lafitte in the presence of the owner, Daniel Cathiard. Though I have heard some call the buildings and grounds homely I found them quite beautiful and old. The chaix is unbelievable– dug into the layers of limestone underneath the chateau. Cathiard, who originally came from the sporting goods business, has been met with some aloofness by the entrenched Bordeaux establishment, but there is no doubting the love, not to mention money, that he has poured into the property since its acquisition in 1991.

We started with a small tasting of some older vintages of Smith-Haut-Lafitte blanc– a wine that I have always loved. The level of Semillon typically used is higher, the oaking a little heavier than Malartic, and the wines perhaps not so ageworthy, but the result is a more tropical wine with wonderful spice. If Malartic is a study in linearity, Smith-Haut-Lafitte is a study in expansiveness.

Just to add to the fuedal-like charm of the place (if feudal can be charming) is the artisinal, old-school, cooperage Cathiard has started in the back. Employing a master cooper, the estate buys its own wood from the most select forests, ages it, and coopers it….at a stunning pace of two barrels a day, all done without mechanization. Cathiard also uses a small number of barrels from other coopers, to “make sure ours are better.” For those cooper dorks out there like me– Tonnellerie Bordelaise is the cooperage founded by Cathiards former master cooper.

The tower at Smith-Haute. With Daniel Cathiard.

Porte Ouverte

Following lunch we met up with our friends Robin Kelly O’Connor and Jana Kravitz and visited a few “open door” tastings. They ranged from awful to quite good. Our first two visits, Ch. Lafargue and Ch. Larrivet Haut Brion had problematic wines. Lafargue, pouring a stream of vintages back to 1998 demonstrated how it is possible to make hard, unapproachable, tough wines every year. Some of the wines at Larrivet had winemaking defects such as unforgivable amounts of bret in the reds poured and excessive reduction in the whites.

We did however have a lovely tour and tasting at Carbonnieux, another one of my absolute favorites. We finished the day at Pape-Clement in Pessac. There is no arguing with the quality of the 2004– clearly the jewel in the ever-expanding Bernard Magrez empire.

If you can not tell by now, my tongue had lost its capacity after tasting so many wines rich in tannin and youthful potency. We were ready for dinner back in Bordeaux and bed.