My Life in Wine - Part 6

Bordeaux Direct was beginning to take shape  

Offering more than one wine was certainly an astute move! And one particular characteristic was beginning to show; one that we still have today. It was our 'wine next door' thing: a marked tendency to prefer the less well-known – and less expensive – wine that lives in the shadow of its more privileged, well-known neighbour. Maybe this was just the traditional British preference for the underdog, but a more powerful reason was Sainte Colombe.

By chance I had landed in this 'underdog' village, lying within an underdog wine region, Côtes de Castillon, that itself felt cheated. From the first days I heard loud and clear the grievance felt by all around me; their sense of having been done out of what was their due. They were all angry at being banned from calling their wine Saint-Emilion or St-Emilionais as they had done before the Appellation Controllee boundaries were drawn up. And I took on their anger.

The Sixties were 'Angry Times' after all. So many, at this time, got angry about social injustice, or race discrimination and other really important things. I just became the Angry Young Wine Merchant! Not quite such a global issue, but … my very own issue. I was incensed about a dubious choice of boundary line forty years before! I wanted to tell everyone that Sainte Colombe and its neighbours had been unfairly excluded from the Saint-Emilion appellation. The same could be said of the wines of Puisseguin and Lussac and others to the north, though they were compensated with Second Division status as inferior 'Satellites' of Saint-Emilion.

Debarred from putting that Glorious Name on their wines, the excluded all had to sell their wines for roughly the price of basic Bordeaux. Everybody knew, though would not necessarily admit it openly, that their wines – done right, made correctly with skill and a well-appointed cellar – could be just as good.

What’s in a name? In wine, a 'name', an appellation, is worth a great deal of money. Many long and expensive court battles have been fought over wine names. The wine of Saint-Emilion had built up its name over centuries.  Because it was particularly good wine. Saint-Emilion and most of its surrounding villages lie on a low plateau of limestone where vine roots must search deep down for water. This struggle results in smaller grapes with more flavours that can, in the right hands, make a particularly rich, mouth-filling and richly flavoured wine, that lingers and delights.

But Saint-Emilion also benefitted greatly from the town's old Saint himself: Emilion the misogynist hermit whose tomb and its power to make barren women fertile drew a vast multitude of medieval tourists to the town. They called themselves 'Pilgrims' of course, but come they did, as tourists still do today. They stayed in the many inns and monastic houses – there were at least 20 of the latter – ate and of course drank the local wine. The monks and nuns, being on the whole brighter and more learned than your average peasant, were able to produce some superior stuff from their rocky vineyards. And so a reputation was born and a name or appellation was made. 

I will drone on still more if you don't mind. This is after all a fifty year obsession and as I said above, it clearly shaped what 'Bordeaux Direct' was, and Laithwaite's Wine still is.

Early on, Saint-Emilion would have meant wine from the hill villages all around. But it would NOT have meant wine from the villages down the flood plain of the Dordogne River to the south. Because there wasn't any. Because a valley floor is not suitable for vines because it floods most winters. It still does. It’s a flood plain. Flooded vines, unsurprisingly, produce big, watery grapes with little flavour and almost none of that rich mouthfeel, or body. Instead the flat valley floor produced the beef, lamb and bread that went so well with the good hill wines.

Until, in 1920, a Commission chaired by the Curé of one of the valley villages decreed that these pastoral villages should be included in the new, official, Parisian bureaucratic, Controlled appellation of Saint-Emilion, and that a whole bunch of hill villages be excluded. Look in The World Atlas of Wine and you will see the result. Much delight in the valley – St-Emilion wine is lucrative – and much upset on the hills. To this day, the Saint-Emilion château owners on the hills sniff about the 'cattlemen's wines' from the valley. But the wine growers in the excluded zones were most upset. So I went in to bat for them and Monsieur liked that. So he found me others.

I had met Henri Bourlon when researching my geography dissertation on 'St-Emilion and Surrounding Areas'. A big man, fierce-looking, but kind to me, who had built a substantial property of 50 hectares in Puisseguin, adopted modern practices and, rare in those days, a bottling line. We shared a passion for gadgets.

I loved his rounded, dark soft wine, Le Vieux Château Guibeau 1966 a label and wine he did for me. When old Henri died, I carried on buying from his son Henri junior, Maire of Puisseguin, and when he retired, continued with his daughter Brigitte. Brigitte's daughter is now 18 and heavily involved with the estate. So I guess we will soon be dealing with old Henri's great granddaughter.

Thousands of customers today love Le Vieux Château Guibeau, and a good few hundred have called in on the Bourlons for a look around and tasting. Sadly, I don't think they get the benefit of old Henri's favourite party trick. He kept a wine rack of top Saint-Emilion Cru wines and before dinner, guests like me were invited to pick a bottle. Two decanters would then appear on the table. The challenge was to pick which was from Guibeau and which was the Saint-Emilion costing twice the price … or more. Sometimes you guessed right. Sometimes not. But the point was that with the enjoyment always so similar, why bother paying double?

Built him a massive and still loyal following, did this performance. It also strengthened my belief that what I should do for my customers was find them more and more of these 'wines next door to the famous'.

I knew Maurice Gouzon from the coop because he sold a lot of its wine. He was an agent. But his base was in Bergerac and what he mostly sold were the, then, totally unknown wines of the departements of Dordogne and Lot et Garonne. Wine regions like Bergerac,  Montravel and Duras also benefit from the same excellent wine geology as Saint-Emilion, Castillon and much of the region south of the Dordogne that makes wines labelled just Bordeaux. Maurice had, like quite a few I came to know, started out on his bike selling wine after the war. He was still a keen Cycliste and raced most weekends. He must've been better on a bike that in a car because his office was scarily decorated with the steering wheels of cars he had written off.  He was not the only French driver who terrified me...some still do. Its the way they talk when driving; that Gallic way, turning and gesticulating. God, I feel sure, never intended the French to drive. 

Anyway, he was doing well with Dordogne wines in France. He thought I could do well with them in Britain and generously introduced me to producers like Madame Becker. Mme Becker was a rather severe old widow originally from Alsace who made something almost unique back then; a really clean, crisp and wonderfully affordable white wine from Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon at her adorable, all-towers-and-turrets Périgord Château de Pannisseau. This became very popular with my customers, and remained so many years after her death until her son also died and the château changed hands … and the wine lost its charm for me.

I had another lucky break. Maurice Gouzon did most work with Unidor; one of the Dordogne’s dozen or so wine cooperatives. I though a red Bergerac would go down really well as another 'cheaper-but-just-as-good wine from next door' … to Bordeaux. Same soil, climate and grape varieties as Bordeaux. Just much cheaper as back then, it was almost unheard of outside France.

A dozen co-ops though … I didn't have time to taste through that lot. But my old team's hooker Popol did! I'd played a season and a bit for the Castillon XV, flying gracefully down the wing … until the local food and wine regime did for my speediness once and for all. The team's evening training was always followed by a few rounds in the Bar Venise, then large horse steaks grilled over a fire in the back yard, half a camembert, half an apple pie and as much slightly dodgy wine as you could hold. (The town's  boucher chevaline,  fromagier and patissier were the team's most generous supporters.)

Anyway, to my amazement, there, up the Dordogne, was Popol (nickname) in his lab coat diligently tasting and analysing every wine Unidor had made. He was their oenologist, sort of like a wine vet. Oenologists don't – or didn't – actually make wine, they just tell others how to, then check the results. He showed me a few … the day's best … and worst. We chatted and – bonds between old Castillon players being strong – he said he'd show me the best tank the region had produced last year. He did, and did for many years after, during which my really outstanding Bergerac red comprehensively outsold all my Bordeaux.

Dominique Guillot de Suduiraud made wine in a remote and rather overlooked part of the Graves district. A bachelor who lived in an ancient château with his terrifying, ancient mother, he was the great pioneer of modern dry white wine making. He ran the Bordeaux research institute at La Tresne and had installed in his Château Magence the first stainless steel tanks ever seen in the region. These he cooled by running cold water down the outside and so kept his Sauvignon Blanc ferments just ticking over for many days. And that’s how you get that crisp, fresh fruit aromatic tang everyone loves so much these days. Back then he was the only one doing cold-fermented Sauvignon in Bordeaux. Customers lapped it up of course.

All these men and Monsieur Cassin were mad keen competitors in France's wine competitions, Les Concours de Vin. That’s how they knew each other. They always entered their wines, often won, and also went along as judges. In later years they invited me along to Paris; the big one, first Saturday in March when that elegant city is full of red-faced farmers. I learned a lot with them.  They took young me to Le Crazy Horse.

Monsieur Cassin, Monsieur Bourlon, Monsieur Gouzon, Monsieur Guillot de Suduiraud and the President of the little cooperative of Francs (another tiny and forgotten wine region) taught me so much … but they also did something so generous I still wonder at it today. They got together and bought me a Ford Transit of my own.

 

Five of them chipped in £200, (and I put in the same; the last of grandmother’s). £1200 bought a shiny new, aluminium-box bodied, 35cwt Ford Transit in those days. With double wheels at the back, it could carry 100 cases of wine. I was aiming to sell 100 cases a month! Wow! Huge!

Which meant a trip to Bordeaux every month. Now that was a prospect that really excited me. Luckily, it excited customers too.