Tasting 27 vintages of our Château La Clarière. The day-off
started well. Except you get to the bakers after eight and all the good stuff's
gone. By ten we had all the bottles lined up round a big circular table in the
bat cave where we store the piles of seven cases each from every vintage we
have made at La Clarière. The bat stayed up in his hole and didn't seem
bothered.
1984 to 2010 … with the 2011 in barrels around us and the
2012 arriving up above us. Good to get away from the hubbub and crashing around
upstairs. Good too, to have no phone reception in the caves. It was Henry, me,
Guy who was our first farmer, now retired, Justin MW, and Claire who runs our
cellars here, to start with. We worked quietly and slowly which is the best
way. Extensive notes were taken which I will draw together and circulate to our
Confrères (the rather important people who actually buy this wine). We have
Confrères who have been drinking our wine for two decades or more. We thought
they'd enjoy a bit of a résumé. We would too.
So, the detail I will save. But will say that the remarkable
thing for me was that no wine had fallen apart. Some wines are past their best –
they have faded – but I could still happily drink all of them. I'm quite proud
of that. They were lighter wines in the 80's, got richer in the 90's, and
blossomed in the 2000's. But in all three decades we won plenty of medals and
actually our progress mirrors the progress made in our region.
We were the first in our region to sort our harvest and
throw away poor grapes. And by 'our region' I mean Castillon and St Emilion. We
had very high standards of cellar cleanliness from the beginning … we built the
first completely new winery in Castillon for decades. Just being selective and
clean probably won us our first gold medals.
But we also made mistakes. Our vineyards were new and
produced too many grapes. I knew little about winemaking. But we made 'charming'
wines which can still charm. And we got by quite well … thanks to the Confrères
buying all the wine every year.
Jean-Marc Sauboua took over the winemaking in the '90's and
we can taste how his 1994 was a big step up. He took a more vigorous approach
to winemaking and we also started thinning our crop by dropping grapes in
August. So we made sturdier and more concentrated wines. Still sort of
'serious' though. Not a lot of olfactory fireworks.
These came in the 2000's. Mostly due to us finally realising
we had to let our grapes stay longer on the vine. To super-ripeness. And we
also began to incorporate the fruit from the older vineyards we acquired which
took us from three hectares to six hectares (although, due to our efforts at
making a richer, bigger wine, we still made about the same number of bottles).
We seem to best in the unfancied vintages. 2002 is a real
star with us. Pretty happy with every recent vintage.
By the end there were loads of people crowding round.
In the afternoon we planned a blind 'horizontal' tasting of
our pick of the best Castillons made by our neighbours and some representative châteaux
from across the border in St Emilion. Unfortunately I missed that as I had to
rush a sick friend to hospital and sit there for six hours while they sorted
him out. No complaints though. Libourne
has a great hospital. I owe it so much.
They told me when I got back that whilst it was a St Emilion
that won, the Castillons did best overall and the Laithwaite family vineyards
did very well.
I have asked we do more of these blind tastings. The real truth comes out when you can't see
the labels.
It was a quieter evening – only 14 – and early bed as we're
back out with the secateurs the morrow.
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