VINE EXPECTATIONS

A hectare of wildflowers for every hectare of vine is among the strict tenets that Château le Puy follows in the biodynamic path less trodden in Bordeaux. June Lee finds out more from the current custodians, Jean-pierre and Pascal Amoreau.

Jean-pierre and Pascal Amoreau of Château le Puy

“Amiracle wine… produced with the most natural methods.” “400 years without a drop of pesticide.” The inclusion of Château le Puy’s 2003 vintage in the TV adaption of the successful Japanese manga, Drops of God, catapulted the modest Right Bank winery into something of a phenomenon.

But this inadvertent incursion into popular culture is only one small part of its story. Jean-pierre and Pascal Amoreau, the 13th and 14th generation of the family who has been farming their lands since 1610, take their custodianship very seriously. There is no other Bordeaux label that sits as comfortably on both natural wine bar lists and gets featured on Michelin-starred restaurant menus as Château le Puy, thanks to a strict organic and biodynamic regime that began since early 1900s.

ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE

The estate’s Château is located at 107m above sea level, the second highest point in the Gironde department, on the same rocky plateau as Saint-emilion and Pomerol. While it was built in 1832 by Barthélemy Amoreau, the oldest sections of the building date to the early 17th century. Even older are the standing stone remains on what the family calls plateau des marveilles, or plateau of marvels, believed to be from an oppidum (Celtic fortified town) which could be as old as 3,000BC. Stone flints are still unearthed today, attesting to the site’s history as a stone tool-cutting centre.

Up till World War II, agriculture was mostly organic until the advent of chemical agriculture took root. Jean-pierre’s grandfather at the time was “too stingy” to buy the chemicals, he recalls, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. More likely, he adhered to a philosophy of looking after the soil that’s similar to today’s biodynamics.

In 1990, Jean-pierre and Pascal (who are 81 and 51 this year) built on the traditional winemaking practices of the estate by researching ways of maturing their wines without adding sulphites. They start by painstakingly selecting only the ideal grapes, carefully bringing them to the winery to avoid oxidation of the must, and then relying only on spontaneous fermentation without adding yeast. The red grapes are matured in barrel for 24 months without sulphur, with regular stirring in barrel according to the lunar calendar, which helps to stabilise it.

While it sounds straightforward on paper, the process is known to result in wine with multiple faults and no ageing potential at all. When asked why many chateaux can’t achieve low or no sulfur style wines, Jean-pierre muses, “Most of the winemakers have been taught only to make wine in the conventional way. And unfortunately, this is still what people learn in oenological schools. It is not really about what they could change in their methods but if they want to do it or not.”

A CHANGING WORLD

Out of the estate’s 100 hectares, 50 hectares are devoted to production and 46 hectares are dedicated to the le Puy ecosystem: a compromise between uncultivated areas (forest, lakes, orchards and meadows) and vine. Climate change has not spared Bordeaux, and the effects are both good and bad, in Jean-pierre’s view. “Bad, in the increase of alcohol level by dehydration of the berries but there is also a positive aspect to it as the rise of temperatures help with the potential issues connected to ripeness of some grapes like Cabernet. Consequently, there are no bad vintages anymore; there is a certain regularity in terms of quality across vintages that was uncommon 20 years ago,” he explains.

However, as Pascal notes, “We do encounter more unpredictable climatic events like strong winds or rain, hail stones and frost than we used to. And this is on top of the rise of alcohol level and the dehydration of the berries that impacts the harvest. Consequently, our yield has decreased over the last 10 years.”

Don’t ask them whether new technology is the answer. “We have gone back in time by replacing tractors with horses,” comes the reply from the Amoreaus. “We have five today, six next year and we want more. Horses don’t only do a better job than the tractors, they enhance the diversity of plants on the domaine, they contribute to reintroduce predators in the ecosystem, they don’t compact the soil and most importantly they bring peace and happiness in the head of our people.” In short, “there is nothing stronger than the connection between the man, his companion and the earth.”