Claire Villars Lurton

The power of trees Heading up her family’s châteaux wasn’t Claire Villars Lurton’s original plan. But when her parents died in an accident in 1992, she left her studies as a physics doctoral student in Paris to take on her winemaker mother’s role. She became an oenologist, aiming from the start to ‘come back to virtuous and ecologic viticulture’.

That path took her from growing cover crops to organic and biodynamic certification at the estates she now owns – fifth growth Château Haut-Bages Libéral in Pauillac and Châteaux Ferrière (third growth) and La Gurgue in Margaux. Along the way, she married Gonzague Lurton, owner of second growth Château Durfort-Vivens (and Jacques Lurton’s cousin). Together they bought Château Domeyne in St-Estèphe and founded an estate in Sonoma.

Today she is one of Bordeaux’s most exciting winemakers, leading the way in agroforestry and agroecology as another way to create healthier vines for the future. ‘Last year I started planting 120 trees in the middle of vine blocks,’ she says. The mix includes fruit and nut trees and others like the Siberian elm. Trees help soil retain water in hot, dry years and encourage a mycorrhizal fungus network that increases trace and mineral elements in the soil.

She also launched the first no-added sulphur wine from a cru classé (Haut-Bages Libéral) with the 2020 vintage of Ceres (on sale in France at about €20-€24), sourced from an 8ha Merlot plot in Haut-Médoc, where she is interplanting trees and working towards biodynamic certification.

Villars Lurton sees all her sustainable efforts as a long process. She likes to say that it’s a journey, not a project.