Re-Learning Bordeaux

First trip of the year and I'm about to head over to Bordeaux. I haven't been back since I worked there in 2003. I am excited, yet I am apprehensive. Bordeaux, to me, can be great and exalting, but it can also be a harbinger of the worst in wine as well. Napa Valley over here mirrors this troubling dichotomy. I remember in 2003 having lunch with some heavy weight Bordelaise company CEO- the guy owned over a dozen properties and many more designer wine labels- and I listened to him as all he discussed was distribution, and branding, and selling product.

No doubt, selling product, whether you are Coke or whether you are the smallest little farmer selling a couple of hand picked organics eggs each week, cannot be ignored. But, I think there's a "right way" to do it. Each product, and in wine- each wine, each estate- has its own merits. Every time you visit an estate there's something special that's happening there that makes it different than the others and unique inside a larger portfolio. Price structuring is not that difference- although talk to many marketers, listen to that old Bordeaux CEO, and that's what they talk about. Consumers, more importantly people, could give a shit less about price structuring. What they and I (cause yes, I buy my share of wine and eggs too!) care about is authenticity, soul, value, and a sense of connection to why a product, and/or a wine, is created.

A distinctly remember being in Napa almost 5 years ago. Napa trips are long and often grueling because it's a place wrought with a lot of the above- the negative side especially. And at the end of the trip we visited this very small producer way up on Spring Mountain. The winemaker was cool. The family that owned the property was incredibly wealthy. There was a pool there and horses. And we were tasting through the estate's lineup over lunch with the winemaker and the wife. I was very tired, and after hearing all about "how well we think this varietal does here" and "how delicious these wines are" I finally lost my patience and asked- "So, why did you make this wine?" You would have thought a bomb exploded at the end of this table. But, hats of to the winemaker. She dropped the marketing BS and immediately moved into the story of the site she was working, her passion for old vine Petit Verdot and Cab Franc and what she thought those varietals would bring to a Napa Cab, and where she wanted to take the wine so that it would age with grace and beauty. Obviously, I respect her for that.

Anyways, I am excited to head over to Bordeaux. St Emilion is an amazing town- arguably the most beautiful in all of France. And I'm going to see Jean Luc Thunevin. The Anti-Bordelaise. What am I most excited about? I want to hear Jean Luc talk about the estate's he works with, and I want to hear him talk about why he works with them. I want to see behind the curtains and get a look at what makes Bordeaux special again.