Interview: Denis Durantou
An undoubted star of Pomerol, the owner of Château L’Eglise Clinet is a champion of terroir. Jane Anson discovers what sets him apart from other winemakers in Bordeaux
Jane Anson meets the owner of L’Eglise Clinet in Pomerol – a champion of terroir
THERE AREN’T MANY Bordeaux châteaux that are still flying the flag for a low-key entrance, but it comes as no surprise that Château L’Eglise Clinet is one of them. The rusted sign, barely readable unless you are right in front of it, signals that this is Denis Durantou land, where he writes his own rules, both stubbornly under the radar and supremely confident.
This is a man whose family has owned land in Pomerol since 1785 but who grew up elsewhere in France and only took over the family estate in 1982, aged 26, after completing his studies in economics at the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris.
You can still see the original plot by the oak tree that sits near Pomerol’s church (giving the estate its name) and today forms one of the four blocks that comprise L’Eglise Clinet’s 4.5ha. It’s half-gravel, half-clay and planted to 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc.
Durantou – neat unobtrusive glasses, casually well dressed, a silver-haired AdrienBrody-meets-Harvard-professor – seems oblivious to the usual Bordeaux rules. None of the Durantou wines have an outside consultant (although he does use the Rolland laboratory in Pomerol for testing). He doesn’t travel much to meet customers or hold international tastings, so doesn’t have the Air Miles and the Platinum Amex held by most of the star winemakers of the region (‘a chef should stay in the kitchen’, he asserts). And he spent most of the blockbuster Robert Parker years of the 1980s and 1990s out of the limelight – perhaps, he suggests, because he kept his levels of new oak down to between 20% and 30% until the mid-1990s.
All this may explain why L’Eglise Clinet built its reputation without the help of the usual network of Bordeaux merchants, who only really started taking notice once it gained recognition from outsiders – notably collectors in the UK and Germany. The négociants came after the prices began climbing.
In search of terroir
We are discussing this as we walk and drive between his different properties, because I want to better understand the one thing that for me truly sets Durantou apart from his peers in Bordeaux (Baptiste Guinaudeau at Lafleur and a handful of others aside). It’s his maniacal attention to terroir – and the fact that this approach holds true across his properties in Lalande-de-Pomerol and Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux, as well as the flagship on the famed Pomerol plateau.
He is characteristically blunt about why this is important to him. ‘Grand cru doesn’t mean anything any more in Bordeaux. The word “château” doesn’t mean anything any more. What lasts is the lieu-dit (vineyard plot) and the terroir, and this is what we need to
‘Grand cru doesn’t mean anything any more in Bordeaux. The word “château” doesn’t mean anything any more’
defend, like in Burgundy. Napa is moving towards this, Barolo also – promoting this link between wine and its terroir. Yet we seem to be going the other way.
‘Today châteaux seem more interested in brand extensions, putting their name on wines that come from other parts of the region and are even made by other winemakers. They are all running after international brands, but this destroys the idea of appellations. What will guard our reputation against the
competition from international wine regions? A sense of place, together with vintage, blending, oak ageing – these are the skills of Bordeaux, the real signatures of this region. If we don’t defend them, then we can’t expect anyone else to.’
This belief is no doubt why he is keen to preserve the vineyard size of L’Eglise Clinet, which has been unchanged for the past 100 years and lies in one single stretch around the estate, on clay and gravel terroir. This is also true for Les Cruzelles in Lalande-de-Pomerol (‘if we were in Burgundy it would be called a monopole, as I have the entirety of the 0.5ha plot’) and its neighbour La Chenade
Back in Pomerol itself, La Petite Eglise is in a separate spot of sandier soils, a 400m walk from the main château (this time over two plots, about two-thirds of which are about to be pulled up for replanting), and on land that was used until 1975 for grazing their vineyard horse Pompon.
Attention to detail
There are no horses ploughing the vines at L’Eglise today, but everything is done with an obsessive attention to detail. The first thing I was given on arrival was the terroir maps of all of his estates, carefully annotated with soils and sub-soils, grape plantings, rootstocks, orientation of rows and direction of slopes. In the vineyard, careful pruning early in the season takes precedence over green harvesting in summer, and different canopy heights are used depending on terroir and vintage.
Durantou is almost finished with a long programme of replanting to ensure that all vines are between 7,000 and 8,000 vines per hectare, and on the right rootstocks (they were planted to the vigorous S04 rootstock, as was so much of Bordeaux in the 1970s, but he now uses 3309 across Pomerol and Lalande, with the addition of 420A in Castillon where there is more limestone).
‘Looking back, those first 10 years working without lots of new oak probably helped me,’ he says. ‘Maybe it was a mistake commercially, but it meant that I got to know my terroirs without extra layers of flavour, and woke me up to the possibilities.’
He was also helped by starting a small négociant business in the 1990s, which allowed him to taste widely across different terroirs, and to champion smaller ones (and, occasionally, to buy them, as this was how he came across Château Les Cruzelles, which he bought in 1999, and Château Montlandrie, purchased in 2009). He also makes a wine in St-Emilion, but doesn’t own there. ‘Why would you want to make a wine in an appellation that doesn’t concentrate on the taste but on the politics?’ is how he puts it.
‘I believe in translating terroir as honestly as possible,’ he says, ‘and always try to keep that in mind when I make a wine, or buy an estate. Every property I buy is with a geological map in hand.’
Merlot man
Over the past 30 years, he has carried out massal selection with four different vine nurseries, testing for viruses each time and carrying out hundreds of micro-vinifications. His most recent massal selections are at Château Montlandrie in Castillon with old-vine Cabernet Franc from L’Eglise Clinet and Cabernet Sauvignon ‘taken from an extremely prestigious Left Bank’. At all of his estates, however, Merlot remains dominant. ‘Global warming has not killed Merlot if you chose the right rootstocks,’ he says. ‘I worry about its aromatic envelope if you do not.’
It’s here, at Montlandrie in Castillon, that you start to see a more outward-looking, almost expansive side to Durantou. Where L’Eglise Clinet, Les Cruzelles and La Chenade are easy to miss if you drive past, Montlandrie is almost exuberant by contrast. Perfectly pointed limestone walls adorn one side of the estate, a new 1,200m2 winery is nearly finished, extensive gardens are being planted and there are even plans for an amphitheatre to host musical events starting from summer 2018, together with an artist’s house for the visiting musicians. His daughter Noémie will be in charge of arranging the productions and booking the artists, but there seems little doubt that he’s allowing himself to relax a more here, and to bring together his other passions of architecture, food and music.
Durantou is authentic, measured, and undoubtedly doesn’t suffer fools gladly (I’d like to bet there’s no slacking off if you work for him) but he’s also extremely good company. You can taste it in every glass of L’Eglise Clinet: it’s a monumental yet nuanced, textured and layered wine that can take your breath away.
But it’s through Durantou’s smaller wines that you start to understand just how much he cares about flavour, and about looking for the best in every piece of land that he works with. And it’s this that turns him from being a meticulous and exacting winemaker into a truly interesting one.
‘I believe in translating terroir as honestly as possible’