Nuevas dimensiones del territorio rural

BY WILL LYONS

Crossing the Jalle du Breuil on the southern slopes of Bordeaux’s St.

Estèphe commune, the marshland unexpectedly clears. Here, the D2 road straightens from its northern curve, cutting through what many regard as the heart of Bordeaux’s classic Médoc region: the vineyards of Pauillac.

For anyone familiar with this magical stretch of road, it isn’t the immaculate carpet of vines that trail down to the banks of the Gironde estuary that catches the eye, but a thin line of weeping wil-lows on its bank. Oenophiles know to slow down. Barely visible through the swaying branches are the manicured gardens and turret of Château Lafite Rothschild—a view little changed since the 18th-century and one immortalized by its distinctive engraved label.

The estate’s 2011 is, as one would expect, reserved. But under the cloak of its youthful tannins, black currant and a delightful, fresh

suppleness is revealed. For a wine so fine, the tannins are exquisite and its ethereal weight is remarkable. It is reminiscent of a meal in a Michelin-starred restaurant, where the flavors and texture are power-ful, but the finish on the palate is light.

Despite the obvious quality of Lafite’s wines, some nagging ques-tions remain: Why has this château caught the imagination like no other in Bordeaux? What makes someone pay £43,000 for 12 bot-tles of the 2009 vintage, as one bidder did at a Hong Kong auction in 2010, redefining the price of youthful fine wine? And, given the recent downturn in the Bordeaux fine-wine market, can it retain its elevated price?

Those familiar with this region know there are at least eight wines that can rival Lafite’s immediate charm, including the four other Bordeaux First Growths—Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild. On the other side of the Gironde, in Pomerol and St.

Émilion, are Le Pin, Pétrus, Ausone and Cheval Blanc. But in terms of investment potential, international recognition and market demand, over the past few years, Lafite has eclipsed them all.

Since the 1990s, the estate has been under the careful guidance of Charles Chevallier. Reserved, almost reticent, Mr. Chevallier says he is as perplexed as anyone as to why its price has risen so dramati-cally. He points to the quality of the wine, which he says comes from a process that involves precisely timing the picking of the grapes, not extracting too hard when drawing the flavor and color out of the skins, and respecting the house style of elegance and finesse over brute power and high alcohol. But above all, he recognizes the

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importance of the soil and its gravel, which in parts of the vineyard stretches down more than four meters.

He explains that his winemaking team, oenologist and winemaker Christophe Congé and vineyard manager Regis Porfilet, goes through exactly the same procedures at the Rothchild’s neighboring estate, Château Duhart-Milon. The two properties are less than one kilometer apart, and since 1962 have been managed by a single team.

But the definition and style of the wines are different, Mr. Chevallier says. So too is the retail price, with a bottle of 2010 Duhart-Milon priced at around €134, compared with €1,047 for Lafite.

“The crucial factor in making great wine is to pick at exactly the right time,” Mr. Chevallier says. “We do this by spending a lot of time in the field…. I taste, then I make a decision. We try to find the right balance between the acidity and the sugar ripeness. From then on, the process of making the wine is quite easy.

“At the end of the maceration, we have to control by tasting also,”

he adds. “Those are the two main decisions in the life of the wine.”

In many ways, though, Lafite has become more than a wine. As with a number of other premium French wines such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, its following among wealthy collectors in Asia has driven its price to astronomical levels. Only last week at a Bon-hams auction in London, a case of 1982 Lafite sold for £21,850, or

£1,820 a bottle.

“I always think of Bordeaux as Formula One,” says Jonathan Malthus, owner of Château Teyssier in St. Émilion. “Wherever I go in the world, all winemakers want to show their wines against the

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wines of Bordeaux. It is still the benchmark and, within our lives, will remain so.”

The linchpin to that benchmark is the 1855 classification, a list drawn up under the instruction of Napoleon III for the Exposition Universelle de Paris. Compiled by brokers, it ranked the châteaux of the Médoc in five groups of quality. Lafite was ranked at the very top.

It is this ranking, some argue, that provides a clue to the château’s popularity in the Far East. Demand in Asia may also be explained by its classical label, which has never changed, its lineage and, in recent years, by the fact that Domains Barons de Rothschild has a presence in eastern China with year-old vineyard plantings.

“Bordeaux is still the largest single area of great vineyards that exists,” says British importer Mark Walford. “And it is undoubtedly the first winemaking area to open up any country that is likely to have an interest in wine.”

But Château Lafite Rothschild’s history hasn’t always been pep-pered with success. Yes, the estate supplied wine to Britain’s first prime minister, Robert Walpole, in the 18th century, but throughout much of the 20th century, it struggled. Some critics argued it under-performed against its peers in the 1960s and ’70s. Indeed, in an inter-view with The Wall Street Journal last September, Nat Rothschild, scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty that has owned the château since the late-19th century, quipped that “it was a millstone round the Rothschild family’s neck for 100-plus years.”

This changed when the release price for the wine started to rise in the late ’90s, climbing steadily from around €50 a bottle in the mid

’90s to €600 a bottle for the 2011.

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But there is evidence that the fine-wine market, after a tremendous bull run, is experiencing its own downturn. The 2011 en primeur was one of the slowest to sell on record, with manynégociants saying it was the hardest to sell in living memory and some arguing that too much wine has been sold to investment funds and the Asian market in the past five years.

This is borne out by the recent fall in price. According to Liv-ex, the London-based fine-wine exchange, the 2011 Lafite has lost 18%

of its value since it was first offered to the market in April, falling from around £5,500 a case to £4,500 a case. “Has there been a slow-down in terms of increase of price? Yes,” says Richard Harvey, Mas-ter of Wine and head of Bonhams wine department. “There is too much wine floating around, and it is not moving out of Hong Kong quickly enough.”

Others are more sanguine. “The fundamentals are right,” says Liv-ex director Anthony Maxwell. “There is limited supply, the quality is increasing and demand is increasing—maybe not on a month-by-month basis or a quarter-by-quarter, but it is increasing.”

But away from the auction houses and market indexes, workers at Château Lafite Rothschild are praying for dry weather. The vines need a long, dry growing season for the grapes to ripen fully and for the roots to burrow deep and extract the mineral elements that add to the structure and flavor of the wines. For it is the soil, says Mr.

Chevallier, that provides “the magic of Lafite.”

This article originally ran on July 12, 2014, under the headline “The Lafite Phenomenon.”

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