The torchlight glinted off black glass … walls of bottles reaching up to the high roof. The vast place was literally packed to the roof with thousands upon thousands of bottles of every good vintage of Saint Emilion Grand Cru since 1990!
I thought about kneeling. This truly was what every wine merchant the world over can only dream about. Some would kill for this. And it was – mostly – all ours. How come?
I'd like to claim the credit, so would Clare our buyer here, but really it belongs to Dan (Snook, Global Head etc). He'll have to tell the old tale of how as a student he came to interview the late owner of this place, "Coco" Mazeres uncle of Alain Vauthier, and discovered the cache of old vintages lying in wait.
Coco you see was more interested in crafting his wines than in selling them and in his later years the old man came to love them so much he just wouldn't sell anything. Not a bottle. Lesser vintages were sold off in bulk. Everything he thought good enough to bottle, he just hoarded away.
Vintage after vintage Until, many years later, after he had recently died, Dan got a call about this legendary cellar and the memories came flooding back. Busy in the UK and with Clare on holiday he had to ask the old person he refers to – somewhat glibly I feel – as 'Chief' who just happened to be down the road, to go taste.
So I got the treat of a lifetime. The Vauthiers had inherited this liquid fortune. I went over immediately. Are you surprised? It’s just down the hill from Ausone, next to
Canon La Gaffelière. A vast rambling ruin of a place I've stared at many a time (our lawyers are next door and when with lawyers I do a lot of staring out of windows). Old Coco didn't do any decorating.
Alain's daughter Pauline took a bottle of every vintage – ten in all – and set up a 'vertical' back at Ausone. The sheer freshness of those old wines – undisturbed since bottling – wines made the old way with no clever new tricks to make them taste softer sooner. Most of us don't have the patience. But old M. Mazeres certainly did. We toasted him with every bottle.
The recent vintages are great, but the wines from the nineties are just something else! After ten years or so you're no longer tasting fruit, you're tasting … mysteries! Deep mysteries.
Every bottle was fine. Did I have favourites? Maybe. But I'm an old hand at this. I no longer rush to categories or score vintage. Because they change. I'll just say everything was good. Some could be great.
Nearly forgot. What's this wine called? Chateau Simard. You won't know it unless you're my age at least. It’s been so hidden. But in future you will. We will be writing to you shortly.
Buy all you can and think about putting your name down for more as and when the next vintages are released.
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Vineyards here are up to 60 years old. I tasted the wines in the dusty yard on top of an upturned French barrique. These are some of the darkest, spiciest and most exciting Malbecs I've seen. Karim spends every penny he has on the best French barrels and when you have grapes of this quality, he needs nothing else.
