SECOND WINES v TETES DE CUVEE
More years ago than I care to remember – is it really 30 ? – I was invited to lunch with Baron Philippe de Rothschild at Mouton. To my delight I discovered that it was to be just us; I would have the great man all to myself for an hour or so. He was on top form, generous with what was pulled out of the cellar, murderously spiteful and indiscreet about some of his fellow proprietors and totally politically incorrect. It was like a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed myself hugely.
At one point in our coversation the subject ot têtes de cuvée came up. What on earth was the point, we agreed, of creaming off the top five or so percent of the production to create a wine which every writer would fall overboards for, but which no consumer (save perhaps a few intimate friends of the owner) could hope to drink for themselves. And what would be the deleterious effect on the main wine? Inevitably it could be diminished to the point where it was just merely 'good', but otherwise unexciting. All in all super-cuvées were selfish, insulting to the wine-loving public, and in fact an admission of failure on the part of the wine-maker.
Had he ever experimented with a super-cuvée at Mouton, I asked. The Baron gripped me by my shoulder. 'Clive,' he said, 'If I made a super selection here at Mouton, the wine would give you an erection for a fortnight !'
Ah, I reflected: one hundred year vines; the Mouton terroir. I expect it would. But here the Baron interrupted me. Not one hundred year old vines, or not necessarily exclusively so. And he told me that the the 1920s, when he first arrived at Mouton, he'd made some experiments. The nucleus was a vat whose origins came from a patch of vines on the Carruades boundary, where 20 metres away you crossed over a path and were in Lafite. Yes, the vines here were old, but not venerable (and at the time there were still a few small parcels planted prior to phylloxera). It was more that these particular vines were beautiful specimens. He explained he thad tinkered about a bit, creating something that was the best he could possibly imagine producing – just one hogshead's worth. But in the end he said to himself, what's the point. My job is to produce the best quality Mouton and in the largest quantity possible commensurate with the quality. Not hospital sample quantities of something (which may indeed not turn out to be that special after all) just for my own vanity.
Others, sadly, are not as wise as Baron Phillipe. All over the world wine-makers have been tempted into super-cuvée-dom. Largely these come from outside France, but even in Burgundy I came across one the other day. I have long admired – and cellared – the Devillard family's Nuits-Saint-Georges, Aux Perdrix. No more. From 2006 there is a special 'Les Huit Ouvrées', from vines planted in 1922. This wine, all two casks of it, is very delicious. But alongside it the basic Domaine de Perdrix tastes banal. I think of the phrase to cut off one's nose to spite one's face.
Special Cuvées are a different matter provided that they are produced in commercial quantities, like De Luxe champagne, or, for instance Quinta do Noval Nacional. But in Champagne, the houses never forget that their Cheval de Bataille, their main money-making brand, is their non-vintage. If something has to give it is not the latter. Nor are the main brands of the port houses denied the quality they need at the expense of larger declarations of vintage port.
No. The way to produce better wine is to seperate out the 25, 30, 35, 40 percent of the less good: the wine from the young vines, the plots which got hail-damaged, those just less favourably positioned, and so on. Sell this off as a second wine, at a much cheaper price, and the public will roundly applaud you. Some may even condone your increasing greed over the prices you charge for the grand vin.
I come back to the question of old vines. Baron Philippe was right, but not entirely right. The 4.5 hectare Clos des Epeneaux, monopoly of the Domaine Comte Armand, is batch planted, and régisseur Benjamin Leroux vinifies the parcels seperately. You can sample the wines in descending or ascending order of age, as you wish, and then ask Benjamin to make you up a sample approximative to the final blend. It is always - yes, always – superior to the sum of its parts, and to the 70 years old cuvée on its own.
But I yield to no one in my appreciation of wines from old vines. You can tell, more often than not. Old vines give a creaminess to the richness, a silky-smooth mouth-feel which is as much physical as sensory. Old vine wines such as Jean Gros' 1985 Clos de Vougeot (vines planted 1902), the Hensche's South Australian Hill of Grace made from the 'grandfathers', planted, mind-bogglingly, in the 1840s, and that from the more than 100 year old plot in Château Haut-Bailly in the Graves, which of course is blended in with the rest, but which if you arrived before assemblage you used to be able to taste seperately, all demonstrate that age per se must not be discounted.
And I do have a suspicion that the Perdix Huit Ouvrées might be better than a Perdrix made from the entire climat.