Whether it is real estate or winegrowing, certain neighborhoods seem to suddenly catch fire in popularity. Like Brooklyn in New York or the Docklands in London, St-Émilion’s east side is now undergoing such a transformation. There, the famed limestone plateau and the little valleys that fall away down towards the crossroads village of St-Laurent-des-Combes have in recent years developed a magnetic attraction for wine adventurers – winegrowers, consultants, investors, critics and even architects.
The recent convergence of all these events has given the region a certain buzz, a Hollywood Hills type of excitement that dowdy but lovable St-Émilion has always seemed to lack. Yet the rise of the east side of St-Émilion is more than just a wine industry tale of luck, determination and money. It is also a saga of the market forces that have shaped the worldwide wine business over the past two decades.
The newcomers
It is difficult now to recall the visceral threat mainstream Bordeaux saw in the garagiste movement at the turn of the recent century. The gentry on the Left Bank were aghast at what was happening on the Right Bank and the attention that the all-powerful American wine media was giving it. During a 1999 interview, Jean-Bernard Delmas, then director at Château Haut-Brion, boasted that he, too, could make small-plot wines from his 43 ha estate and charge outrageous prices matching those of garagistes such as Jacques Thienpont, Jean-Luc Thunevin and Joseph-Hubert von Neipperg. But that would not be the Bordeaux way, he argued. “My wines are expensive,” Delmas lamented, “but we make enough of it that anyone who wants to buy it can!”
Thienpont was located in Pomerol, while von Neipperg, Thunevin and others sourced grapes in the shadow of highly regarded Château Troplong Mondot. During the harvest of 2004, Thunevin told dinner guests at the family’s apartment next to their Château Valandraud winery, then along a narrow street in ‘downtown’ St-Émilion, that the couple’s “garage” was getting bigger. He said he was expanding Valandraud, originally just 0.6 ha, by buying up parcels east of town, gradually becoming a traditional château owner and less of a garagiste, even though his approach to making big, dense reds remained unchanged.
A few years later at the 2009 Vinexpo, Thunevin wistfully recalled Valandraud’s beginning. “Those first years I was a revolutionary,” he said. “Everyone was talking about me. Now I am half-mainstream, half-revolutionary – or somewhere in between.” He paused, then continued. “[But] perhaps the mainstream has joined me. The techniques and the grape selections we were pioneering have been absorbed by all the winemakers.”
Even as garagistes matured and prospered, they remained in love with their east side terroir. At the top, on or near the plateau, the soil is calcareous mixed with clay over dense limestone bedrock, which falls off to a similar soil on more-porous limestone bedrock. Here and there are patches of decalcified loamy clay on hard bedrock. But perhaps equally important are the folds of the land in these protected, small valleys, which provide not only good drainage but also allow different aspects for choosing where Merlot, Cabernet Franc and even Cabernet Sauvignon are planted.
The newcomers
Sensing the opportunity, wealthy winegrowers and investors flocked in, as they did in the 1990s to places the media then deemed as hot: Priorat, Rioja and Ribero del Duero in Spain; Mendoza in Argentina; Paso Robles in California, and any place with old vines in Australia. The late Jess Jackson, who built a wine empire on the back of his slightly sweet Kendall Jackson California Chardonnay, had lured winemaker Pierre Seillan to California to make prize-winning Sonoma Merlot in the late 1990s. In 2003, the two returned to Bordeaux to purchase Château Lassègue, at the foot of the eastern slopes, and last year Seillan completed a new, multi-million-euro facility.
Swiss perfumist Silvio Denz was also an early investor. In 2005 he purchased Châteaux Faugères and Péby Faugères near Saint-Étienne-de-Lisse and in 2010 added Château Rocheyron in partnership with the Peter Sisseck, with whom Denz had worked in Spain. Sisseck produced Pingus, his own acclaimed Ribero del Duero garage wine. “Either you can buy a great place, or you can create one yourself,” Sisseck said after the 2012 harvest at Rocheyron. “This is the last part of the plateau of calcaire.”
In the winter of 2009 to 2010, the original garagiste of Pomerol, Jacques Thienpont of Le Pin fame, and his wife, Fiona Morrison MW, bought the 8-ha Château Haut-Plantey (which also sold wines as “Château La Bouygue”), an estate just down the eastern slope from Troplong Mondot. They renamed it L’If, “the yew”, to pair with Le Pin, “the pine”.
“Is there a buzz about the area?” Morrison considers. “Well, if you take a look at the people who are making wines around us – Nicolas Thienpont, François Mitjavile, Peter Sissick, Helene Garcin and now Jacques Thienpont, those are some pretty impressive names. We know most of our neighbours, taste each other’s wines, and there is the general feeling that we all want to make wines to the best of our abilities and reach for the sky.”
Winegrowing consulting became common in the east end. Pomerol’s Michel Rolland, who first opened many Right Bank doors for the young Robert Parker, as well as Côtes de Castillon’s Stephane Derenoncourt, has worked with many properties in the region. Parker has long been an advocate of eastern St-Émilion, and in his recent revaluation of the 2005 vintage rated 12 Bordeaux wines with 100 point scores – perfection. Of the 12, five of them are from the area east of the town of St-Émilion – Pavie, Troplong Mondot, Péby Faugères, Bellevue Mondotte and Larcis-Ducasse. La Mondotte, Tertre Rôteboeuf, Gracia (another east side garagiste) and Valandraud are rated just behind.
The latest phase in the gentrification of St-Émilion’s east side is upscale wine tourism. In 2012, two years before her death, Christine Valette-Pariente opened the elegant Les Belles Perdrix restaurant at Troplong Mondot. Although the rear of the hilltop château looks west toward the town, the restaurant’s terrace in summer gives a sweeping view of many of the east side estates. At Faugères, Denz has created what he calls “the cathedral of wine”, an elegant, elevated tasting room with a view created by well-known Swiss architect Mario Botta. For €10.00 ($11.00), Denz offers a one-hour tour of his properties along with a tasting in the cathedral. Not to be outdone, the Belgian De Schepper family, who purchased Château La Croizille in 1996, created an orange-colored tasting room jutting out from the winery, offering a spectacular view of the east side while bearing the brunt of jokes from locals who view it as a garish architectural box.
But while the east side has grown and prospered, the outside world has drastically changed during the past decade.
The fallout
The Great Recession that began in 2008 proved a costly lesson to the nouveau riche of the wine world. While the iconic wines of France and even California mostly survived with few scratches, those who had been critical darlings for only a few years were no longer in demand.
Secondly, Parker’s influence and that of other raters are no longer the formidable force they once were, although baby boomer Americans still pay attention to them. Less impressed with reviews, however, are some of the most-influential and most-informed people in the wine trade – sommeliers. Although they may still stock their restaurant cellars with high-priced trophy wines for their older, affluent customers, they have more interest in ferreting out wines from newer areas that come at attractive prices. These are the wines they sell to the Millennials in wine bars.
Additionally, while highly rated, well-financed châteaux in the east end may continue to be in demand, they have not had a halo effect on other wines of the region. “In fact, I am not sure our customers identify these estates as those from this area,” says Xavier Magen of negociant Maison Védrenne. “But true, as professionals, we know terroirs from this area produce great wines.” Frédéric Lospied of negociant JP Moueix has similar thoughts, saying, “The terroirs lying immediately on the east of the town are for sure of high quality and rank among the best in Bordeaux.”
“They don’t have the collective strength of the Left Bank,” agrees Jeff Zacharia, owner of Zachys, one of the US’ largest wine retailers and auction houses, “but there is definitely a lot of interest in these wines both at retail and auction. They’ve sold pretty nicely over the past two years. Personally, I love these wines because they are unique and expressive, a very exciting part of Bordeaux overall.”
Justin Gibbs, a co-founder of the Live-ex Wine Exchange in London, was asked to track sales of Troplong Mondot and two newer stars, Larcis Ducasse and Péby Faugères, over a five-year period when the overall Live-ex Bordeaux 500 index rose just 1.1%. Troplong Mondot was up 10.7%, Péby 22.4% and Larcis up 27%. “All three produced wines in 2009 and 2010 that were hailed by Parker,” Gibbs notes. “Troplong Mondot already had a broad following, and Péby Faugères and Larcis-Ducasse saw their stars rise as a result. The recent 2005 upgrades to 100 points for all three only cements the trend.”
Others less-well-reviewed but well-funded east-siders are meanwhile having modest success. For example, the 2003 and 2004 Château Lassègue was selling at $49.00 in the two years following the Jackson-Seillan takeover, but has steadily moved to more than $100.00 a bottle for the 2012. At the same time, nearby Château de Candale and Château Bellefont-Belcier can each command only around $33.00 for recent vintages.
“The wine trade is feeling a bit wary of the St-Émilion region at the moment after all the debacle about the repeated classifications and appeals,” L’If’s Morrison says. “There seems to be a general fatigue after all the hype and discussion. You may have noticed that many of us in the area don’t worry about the classification – we all simply have ‘Saint-Émilion Grand Cru’ [on the label], and that’s it. Rather like Pomerol, it is the market that decides which are the best wines and how much the wine drinker is willing to pay for them.”
“This has been a steady trend for 20 years as high scores from critics, particularly Parker and Suckling, have driven interest and sales,” says Rob Griffin of California-based distributor Wine Warehouse. “Generous publicity has come with the territory and helped make unknown areas more familiar. All the serious Bordeaux buyers have been focused on Right Bank hot spots for a long time and still are, but not to the exclusion of other exciting areas.”
Neverthess, Bordeaux sales lag in the US. Even Parker has warned Bordeaux elders about the negative publicity around continued rising prices for first and second growths, while a younger crowd seems to find wines from elsewhere more exciting. “As we work with restaurants almost exclusively we pay absolutely zero attention to reviewers’ points,” says Philippe Newlin of Vintus, an American fine wine importer. “There was interest a few years ago in the garagistes from there,” says Michael Madrigale, head sommelier for chef Daniel Boulud’s chain of New York restaurants, “but I don’t think their reputation has improved any. They are part of the whole Bordeaux image problem.”
For now, the sun is shining brightly in the east. The top chateaux have weathered the recession and they are still holding firm on the American market. The question is whether that cloud on the western horizon is a passing shadow or a gathering storm.
