Fashion vintage: how two historic Bordeaux vineyards have been restored to former glory under Chanel’s ownership – The Art Newspaper

“We’re again.” Nico­las Audebert is saying the return to prominence of two historic vineyards within the Bordeaux heartland of French winemaking—Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Canon—each of which he has managed since 2014. “After all, we’ve got loads of work to do,” Audebert says, “and yearly will likely be a brand new problem. However we’re again.”

Audebert’s declaration marks an anniversary that hyperlinks these distinctive and characterful winemaking issues. Rauzan-Ségla is a 364-year-old winery within the Margaux appellation (or area), on the left financial institution of the Gironde estuary, to the north of town of Bordeaux. Canon, a winery fashioned in 1760 from a longtime property, is a part of the Saint-Émilion appellation east of town and on the river’s proper financial institution. In 1994 and 1996, respectively, the posh, trend and perfume home Chanel acquired each—a further asset for its upscale portfolio.

Three many years not less than had been required, Audebert says, to deliver these grand previous vineyards to their finest: one to grasp, one to restructure, one to make exact plans and open the curtain on the long run, as he places it. “Chanel has given us the time to do all of it correctly, to be who we wish to be, not stepping into a rush, not pushing an excessive amount of. That is the right second,” he says, “to have fun two labels that are actually thought-about among the many finest wines of Bordeaux—as they had been prior to now.”

Reviving these basic wines, whereas sustaining their particular person traditions, has introduced their ranges of execution, based on Audebert, as much as these of Chanel, a home recognized for exacting requirements of workmanship, savoir faire, and custom combined with analysis and growth. It additionally permits the winemaker to reference a favorite dictum—“La mode se démode; le type jamais” (trend goes out of trend; type, by no means)—of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the legendary designer and founding father of the marque whose companions, the Wertheimer household, personal it to at the present time.

Two wines, one tradition

The late Seventeenth-century château at Rauzan-Ségla, its farm and outbuildings are ranged alongside a street into the village of Margaux. With their lateral disposition they seem to embrace the land, or terroir: deep seams of gravel sitting on a terrific vein of limestone. This core geology signifies that the Rauzan-Ségla vines—largely cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes, with cabernet franc and petit verdot raised in a lot smaller volumes to work as a last “spice”—sit in poor however well-drained soil that causes them to ship deep roots down in the direction of the limestone bedrock, producing a particular flavour within the mature grapes.

Rauzan-Ségla is made up of quite a few parcels, or heaps, of vines—some giant, some tiny—intermixed in a fancy mosaic, with parcels owned by neighbouring estates. The constituent components are damaged into generally very small batches within the nurturing of the grapes, their selecting and vinification, to make a last mix constructed on complexity.

The white-stone 18th-century château at Canon sits in a fold of rolling nation and appears out on rows of vines, with the nice stone belltower of the city of Saint-Émilion on the horizon. These parcels are planted with merlot and cabernet franc vines in a combined clay and limestone soil set on a terrific limestone plateau. With the consistency in terroir throughout the property, the batches of grapes taken on the classic are typically of constant, homogeneous high quality.

Audebert likens the distinction between making wine at Rauzan-Ségla and at Canon to the distinction between conducting an orchestra and acting on a solo instrument. Each carry the identical worth to critical music lovers however the former requires bringing a number of gamers collectively to create a shared concord, whereas with the latter the harmonics are generated throughout one instrument.

From one financial institution to a different

The left and proper banks of the Gironde are sometimes characterised as standing in clannish opposition to one another—a lot within the method of the Left Financial institution and Proper Financial institution of the Seine in Paris—however Audebert sees them as joined by the river; two vineyards united by a single tradition of creating wine “sincerely and actually” whereas displaying a humility within the face of time and nature. The group throughout each vineyards focuses on analysis and growth, however “by staying humble”, François Baudoux, the technical director at Rauzan-Ségla, says, “we be taught one thing new day by day”.

That connection throughout the Gironde is caught within the ebook From One Financial institution to One other (2020), a good-looking photograph essay the place the primary half, on Rauzan-Ségla, counts down from web page 92 to 1—ending on the centrefold of a haunting huge angle shot of the wealthy progress of reed beds and hedge that traces the Gironde—after which, for the second part, on Canon, working upwards from pages one to 92. This conceptual play on numbers is all at one with a commerce and an business the place time, numerology and chronology are central to previous, current and future.

The bridging position of the river can be clear to guests who take a ship journey from the place Rauzan-Ségla borders the Gironde—near the place that river is fashioned by the merging of the Dordogne and the Garonne—upriver to the centre of Bordeaux earlier than finishing the path to Saint-Émilion by street. The journey brings dramatically house Bordeaux’s position within the periodic booms within the area’s wine exports—with the sight of oceangoing cargo ships anchored not removed from town centre after navigating one in every of Europe’s largest estuaries.

On the time of the Roman empire occupying forces on the Gironde despatched wine to succour their garrison in England. Within the early thirteenth century the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, heiress of the duchy encompassing Bordeaux and the remainder of the Languedoc area was queen first of France after which of England (the English time period claret, for Bordeaux wines, is a reminder of the light-coloured “clairet” wines from the area favoured in London within the Center Ages).

The Dutch, on the top of their buying and selling empire within the Seventeenth and 18th centuries introduced experience in drainage to enhancing the standard of the vineyards and money to export Bordeaux wines. Then, within the mid-Nineteenth century the governing class of the UK, enriched by empire and the economic revolution, developed a robust style for Bordeaux wines and exports rose dramatically to what was then the richest nation on the planet.

The significance of time in winemaking

Audebert is among the most admired winemakers of his technology. He’s a technologist with an eye fixed for precision; a farmer in tune with local weather and ecologies throughout the globe; a fluent, considerate raconteur; a clear-eyed decision-maker; and an fanatic who takes pleasure in his work. Earlier than assuming his publish in Bordeaux, the Provence-born Audebert had certified as an agricultural engineer and educated at Krug, one of many nice champagne homes. He then joined Cheval des Andes—a collaboration between Château Cheval Blanc in Bordeaux and Terrazas de los Andes, in Mendoza, Argentina—as a winemaker and oenologist.

Now he’s the final supervisor of Rauzan-Ségla, Canon and two more moderen acquisitions by the home of Chanel: Château Berliquet, one other historic Saint-Émilion winery bordering Château Canon, acquired in 2017—and Domaine de l’Ile, acquired in 2019, on the magical island of Porquerolles halfway between Marseille and St Tropez, which produces scrumptious white and rosé wines.

Time is the whole lot in winemaking, Audebert says. “It’s in every single place in our job: within the winery administration; in the way in which we make the wine; within the time we give to the wine; in our personal interpretation, which modifications through the years.” He and his group members draw on metaphors from the breeding of racehorses and the schooling and parenting of youngsters to explain the lengthy timescale and detailed timekeeping that goes into their craft.

It begins with selecting the best second to choose the grapes by hand, separating them into a number of batches, with every batch processed in at some point. It finishes, after the essential technique of mixing the wine from completely different batches, with the wine in barrels, later bottles, ageing within the cellars. Lastly, there may be the winemaker’s sampling from the bottle, over time, to gauge the event of a classic because it breathes within the glass (and generally a carafe) in the middle of a meal eaten at a tempo applicable to a fantastic wine.

A combination of farming, gardening and artwork

Each Rauzan-Ségla and Canon have been licensed natural since 2024. A priority with sustaining the broader native ecology is clear in any respect the vineyards beneath Audebert’s care. Farms, vineyards and gardens really feel as one. The flower borders are created alongside horticultural traces, visually pleasant however deliberate to encourage a range of species, and to protect indigenous varieties at a time of local weather emergency.

It’s notable that when both Baudoux, at Rauzan-Ségla, or Audebert present guests the vineyards, they use not simply phrases and gestures to make their level but additionally demonstrative contact: with the soil, with clay, pebbles or fossils; with a vine’s trunk, leaves and fruit; or with aromatic crops, together with lavender and fennel, in a naturally deliberate border of Mediterranean varieties that runs into the principle parcels of vines at Berliquet. These tactile interactions are a reminder that winemaking is a mixture of farming and gardening, of artwork, craft and science, all of it depending on bodily interplay with the terroir and its produce.

The group’s ecological method is in step with a carefully researched understanding of the soil, acquired by way of the usage of cutting-edge expertise, together with floor radar, and an understanding of the rising printed analysis into the contact between crops and timber at subterranean fungal, mycelial ranges.

That philosophy is made tangible within the honey from Rauzan-Ségla’s bee hives. The style is refined and lasting on the tongue, with an unforced, unsweetened voice. It feels in concord with the refined, ever-expanding and long-lasting end on the tongue of a 2009 or 2015 Château Rauzan-Ségla served to the château’s company with fillet of Simmental beef from the chef Jean-Baptiste Depons’s kitchen.

A priority with precision

All the things accomplished by Audebert and his groups at Rauzan-Ségla and Canon, and no much less at Berliquet and Porquerolles—within the winery, the backyard, the kitchen, the cellar—speaks of a significantly devoted pleasure: a enjoyment of shared savoir faire; a deal with precision, on working hand in hand with nature; in tasting a number of wines facet by facet and for the pleasure of company; of serving meals that does honour to the wines and the method of a meal constructed round produce from the day’s morning market; on hitting a real be aware.

This focus represents an in depth confidence in mission, a priority with precision, that calls to thoughts a well-known verbal sally from the Seventeenth-century French grasp Nicolas Poussin. When requested how he reached such requirements of execution in his work, he answered, with Coco Chanel-like directness: “Je n’ai rien negligé.” He had uncared for nothing in producing his artwork.

It looks like no accident that one of many nice works produced by the precisely-minded Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time (round 1634-36)—commissioned in Rome by Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi (the long run Pope Clement IX) and now within the Wallace Assortment in London—options Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Bacchus, representing autumn, the season of wine harvests, is one in every of 4 figures symbolising the seasons, as they dance hand in hand, however again to again, to the pipes performed by the God of time.

The iconography of this canvas—mentioned to have been dictated by Rospigliosi—has been a lot debated. However the boldly outward-facing stance of the dancers, catching a declining daylight in opposition to a backdrop of darkish rain clouds, has an elemental high quality, as they join, by way of their barefooted festive “bacchanal”, to the earth, to the terroir. They’re holding a line, the road of a dance, confronted directly by time and nature.

How do the dancers maintain the road? That’s the problem for Audebert and his colleagues within the years to return. The best way to maintain the road in regularly evolving the vineyards of their care, confronted with the urgent timetable of local weather change, with out dropping the important character of the wines of their care.

Wine in an age of local weather change

Audebert and his group have discovered from sharing savoir faire with different companies owned by, or related to, Chanel; notably by way of the home’s 40-year alliance with a grower of perfume blooms in Grasse, the place the engagement with terroir, the weather and time—of selecting roses, say, at precisely the proper second, when they’re open, however not too open, of steeping components in alcohol, and managing the event of a maturing liquid—has a lot in widespread with the challenges of winemaking.

Audebert and his group have additionally discovered from the various geography and native data of the worldwide wine commerce. France, Italy and Spain have lengthy since ceased to be the only engines of authority and innovation, and a half-century increase in New World wines—particularly these in Australia, California and Argentina—has created expertise of winemaking in local weather extremes that’s there to be shared.

Because it occurred, Audebert’s first classic in Bordeaux, in September 2015, adopted a summer season of document excessive temperatures within the area, nearer to those who he was accustomed to in his work in Argentina. He tailored that have to the 2015 classic and vinification. The next spring, the wine critics lauded the Château Canon 2015, awarding it a number of high scores. It was hailed because the wine of the classic.

Ten years on, Audebert and members of his group—Axelle Araud, the wine growth director; Géraldine Léger, the picture director; and Marie Damoiseau, the press and public relations supervisor—are attempting that award-winning 2015 Canon, over a lunch ready by the chef Julien Peurichard. They’re sitting beneath an historic bay tree within the Parcelle du Bourg (the city lot). A magical adjunct to Château Canon, it’s a courtyard house to a couple hundred vines, grown and harvested within the coronary heart of the city of Saint-Émilion. Audebert finds that the wine—which is at all times growing within the bottle—has misplaced a few of its adolescent over-confidence, nonetheless current two years earlier than, and that it’s shifting in the direction of maturity.

That particular 2015 classic, and those who have adopted—the place local weather change turns into an ever extra urgent function of each day life and Bordeaux suffered multiple heatwave that topped 40C in the summertime of 2025—are classes for the long run in an business the place winemakers are more and more confronted with a altering local weather and an evolving ecology. The problem for the long run, Audebert says, is to carry the road, to proceed to evolve the wines—at Rauzan-Ségla, Canon, Berliquet and Domaine de l’Ile—regularly.

His group’s important intention, Audebert says, is the “actual expression of the product” reasonably than placing their private mark on it. No matter their winemaking backgrounds, they have to “really feel” the wine. Canon 2015 got here from the primary 12 months all of them labored collectively. He likes it, but when he and his group had been to make it once more now they’d do it in a different way, with ten years’ expertise of the property.

“Time, once more,” he says. Making wine is all about time.