Why Bordeaux is Best Kept Boring
You really have to marvel at the incredible level of luck that the great Pomerol estate Petrus has had for the past four decades.
It's not that, as former manager Christian Moueix said in a recent piece in Kellogg Insight, he doesn't think about the consumer when making a wine, or that he "makes what pleases me". No. The luck is in the fact that what pleases him happens to be, with great regularity, standard Bordeaux winemaking.
I'm not 100 percent sure but, to my knowledge, Moueix hasn't woken up midway through harvest and said to himself: "No new oak this year"; he hasn't looked wistfully at a bottle of Bojo and thought "let's do carbonic maceration across the lot"; he hasn't gone no-sulfur, just to see; he hasn't got tired of red and thought "rosé". No, it is miraculous that what pleases Moueix, year-in, year-out for decades, is what conforms to your average top-level earner's expectations of great Bordeaux.
For sure, Moueix hasn't been involved in Petrus for almost a decade. But look at his other properties: Trotanoy, La Fleur-Petrus, Belair-Monange, to name a few. No Pet-Nats or appassimento there.
Having read the article it is even more remarkable (I'd use the word "serendipitous" if it would ever come into my head with greater serendipity...) that, given so many top winemakers ignore customer demand, most of the top Bordeaux (top anything) wines are so conformist. Even if vintages provide some variation, surely someone in the Graves has wondered what it would be like to not filter or fine their white wine? Sure, there must be multiple small trials in the cellars across Bordeaux (a different yeast, a new kind of barrel, a different sulfur regime) – all of which would confirm that winemakers do actually get an itch – and sure, quite a few properties are embracing biodynamics or organics; a few, even, are taking the natural route. But, essentially, the processes and the winemaking do not vary greatly. Despite the thesis that the winemaker drives the vision, the customer of such wines is rarely going to be thrown a curveball by them. You're unlikely to find floaties in your Yquem. What pleases Moueix et al., also happens to please the consumer. How amazing is that?
So what is going on? Firstly, despite a lot of passive encouragement to see winemaking as an art, winemaking is a craft. If you must, you can say an individual bottle's contents might be a work of art, but making wine is like a blacksmith banging out horseshoes. Most winemakers admit that the vineyard (climate, growing season, etc.) makes the wine – which somewhat contradicts the notion of winemaker as auteur or visionary – but we're still left with the winemaker as craftsperson.
Like a blacksmith, the nature of a craft is to bang out the same object again and again. But too much of the same is unnatural. Blacksmiths would not have done just horseshoes. They might have done railings, or chains, or swords. They might have put a personal touch, a flourish to each piece. By happenstance or design, variation would have crept in, and be adopted or rejected. It's unnatural, I'd argue, for people to produce the same thing, again and again. Who finds pleasure in that? I admire Champagne winemakers – their craft is impressive – but surely they must find personal validation somewhere outside of the non-vintage blending session?
And where there is monotony in production, the consumption is tailored accordingly. Champagne is not drunk every day for a reason (and this is why brands need consistency) – a variation on flavor is not required. The same is, to a degree, true of the Bordeaux example. It’s unnatural to collect wine – to speculate on it – but the way much of Bordeaux is made fits that mould. You don't decide, as a cru classé, that you're going do a no-sulfur wine.
But sure, most red wine is made like Bordeaux, and most red winemakers get their variety from vintage differences. So what am I trying to say? Well, that notions of winemakers ignoring consumer demand are misplaced, just as notions of consumers being "led" are inadequate. Chicken/egg. Egg/chicken. And to a great degree, any winemaker at a top Bordeaux chateau would be crazy not to make wine to the Bordeaux recipe (although the winemaker's winemakers – Michel and Dany Rolland – have experimented with whole cluster ferments at Le Bon Pasteur – which validates me on one point but not on another).
The top Bordeaux consumer is likewise unlikely to want innovation. But more broadly, the consumer is as inconsistent as the weather itself. Despite attempts to have us believe otherwise, I don’t believe people function as blocks, separated by arbitrary delineations of generations (Boomers, Millennials, Gen-Xes and so on). You could find patterns of consumption by zodiac sign, or hair color, or bed orientation if you so wish. Marketing talks these days almost resemble scientific studies that find conclusions in statistical significance. You are more likely to be regularly constipated if you follow a ballet lesson with a trip to the dentist. Studies find that Gen X and their parents prefer red wine after listening to The Cure. That kind of thing.
Actually, like the weather over vintage, we are endlessly prone to anomalies and changes (sometimes by accident, sometimes whim, sometimes through circumstance) and, like winemakers, we are prone to evolve over time. For instance, I like my beer crafted – I don't go out of my way to drink mass-produced beer – it doesn't interest me. But my outlook isn't constant. I will gleefully neck a bottle of Heineken after a long day at work. I might have one or two. Furthermore, in that situation I will, if I'm honest, enjoy it more than I would a craft beer. Sometimes I feel curious. I remember my first taste of fino Sherry – I spat it out and spent the rest of the day marvelling at how one drink could be so close to the sensation of vomit. I now love Sherry.
Sure, we like reliable. But if we drank non-vintage Champagne every day, we'd get bored. If I drank craft beer every day I'd get tired of that. Sometimes I have a hankering to read a Lee Child book. I go through phases of non-fiction and then fiction, and sometimes mix them up. Sometimes I search out a season of 24. That's not because I'm Gen X or because I'm a Millennial or whatever pigeon-y orifice I am thrust into for the purposes of a marketing demographic, it's because I'm human.
So how did Christian Moueix not get tired of Petrus? Well, he bought a domain in Napa, and has a few other amuse-bouches in Bordeaux. Is he going to do a no-sulfur Trotanoy? No. With huge irony, of course, Moueix's statements in that article conform dogmatically to the vision his consumer base wants of him. Sure, he might allow the vintage to "play its hand", but there’s nothing visionary in that.
But what's impressive (given that we're all human after all) is that he and his counterparts throughout Bordeaux haven’t really – and I mean really – disappointed a large group of people yet. Because if there's one thing everyone knows from doing their own thing once in a while (from trying a new recipe, to picking up the skateboard in middle age, to buying an album on a whim), sometimes you fall flat on your face. Maybe it'll happen in Pomerol one day, but lovers of the maverick winemaker trope shouldn't hold their breath.
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