Château Franc Mayne, Château de Lussac and Château Vieux Maillet

11/12

Winegrowers’ portraits

Winegrowers’ portraits Saint-Émilion

Château Franc Mayne, Château de Lussac, Château Vieux Maillet

A determined couple fired with enthusiasm

Griet Laviale –Van Malderen and her husband Hervé didn’t drink wine before. But in 2000, they decided to create a new life for themselves by making the acquisition of Château de Lussac. Since then, they have constantly invested and, most importantly, involved themselves in Bordeaux’s Right Bank.

At Château de Lussac, their home, they knew straight away how to make this marvellous architectural building shine and implement improvements to the soils of the vineyard’s 30 hectares, plot after plot. Prestige and rank have been re-established; wine lovers and professionals acknowledge this. Bordeaux’s three colours now coexist with a white wine made once again at the property (Sauvignon Blanc, Gris and Sémillon).
At the beginning of 2004, the unassuming estate of Château Vieux Maillet in Pomerol presented itself to them. Then in early 2005, came the opportunity to buy Château Franc Mayne, a Saint-Emilion Classified Growth. Griet and Hervé have succeeded in restoring impetus to this domain. Plantation has been made denser in the vineyard of 7 hectares, which lies in one single piece of land stretching across the limestone plateau of Saint-Emilion and backing onto the Côtes de Francs. A new vat house with a mixture of wooden and stainless steel vats enables wine-making to deal with individual batches from each of the plots of the vineyard. The brand new storehouse for first-year maturation contains wines that will gently smooth their contours in underground quarries. For 10 years now, Michel Rolland’s right-hand man, Jean-Philippe Fort has influenced the style of these wines. Since 2011, Griet and Hervé have also had the benefit of skilled recommendations for vine growing from Anthony Appollot and Richard Vanrenterghem.
At Château Vieux Maillet too, they have made their mark by increasing the proportion of Cabernet in the wine to yield more structure and enhance ageing potential.
At the site of Franc Mayne, with grooves visibly worn into the stone, a Gallo-Roman way along which pilgrims in medieval times used to travel en route to the shrine of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela and a 16th century coaching inn were such treasures that the owners were encouraged to preserve and enhance this heritage through wine tourism. At present, in its Boutique-Hotel the Château provides 12 rooms decorated with the colours of the world. The latest invention is a wooden Swiss chalet where guests can sleep perched at the top of one of Franc Mayne’s cedar trees, to which the second wine of the property is dedicated. And lastly, from the end of last year, visitors are now delighted by a tour of the 2 hectares of underground galleries dug out from Saint-Emilion’s legendary limestone. Talented producer Eric Le Collen stages a tour that awakens the senses, introduces the terroir and art of stone cutting and presents the key characters that have marked Saint-Emilion’s history.
“At each of our estates we offer a charming setting, a cosy place, a personalised welcome and top-quality reception. We simply wish to convey the true values of our wines to restaurant owners/managers and sommeliers, who are our very best representatives. Of course the First Wine of Franc Mayne is our most prestigious, but we also want to show the reasonable prices of our wines such as Château Lussac, charming when young and impressive after ageing; it is a modern wine but also displays the authenticity of the terroir from which it comes. Reasonably and pleasantly priced, structure, fruit.... A wine of reliable quality we like to present to visitors for tasting,” Griet and Hervé tell us.
Château Franc Mayne, member of the prestigious Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, has recently received confirmation of its rank of Grand Cru Classé which it has held continually since the very origin of the Saint-Emilion classification established in 1955. The forthcoming few weeks will see the launch of new back-labels for all the wines. The aim is to enable consumers to really visualise the estates, the teams and the cosiness of the domains. Passion can only truly exist if it is shared with others. Florence Varaine
Photos: Studio Twin, Bordeaux, H. LEFEBVRE
Translation from French by Anne-Marie Shepherd-Capdemourlin