Brand new and very beautiful wine storehouses

06/12

France Bordelais

For a sublimated quality of wines

Is the small oak barrel the best destiny which a high-class wine can know?

The rise of new wine storehouses on the French terroirs makes it imaginable.

Cuvier du Château Malartic-Lagravière

In this 3rd millennium, the great Crus revisit their wine storehouses and call upon famous French architects of worldwide reputation such as Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzampac, or Europeans such as Ricardo Bofill or Mario Botta. The buildings created have for the majority a daring architecture, high technology tools and an ecological overview. The people of Bordeaux initiated this reconversion to improve the quality of wine, and also to have a new tool for marketing and communication. This quest for aromas in the glass, development of the bouquet, is today a constant in all the regions. To optimize this surplus of subtlety and taste, the technical efforts carried out by one and all are considerable.

Le chai du Château Lafite Rothschild conçu par Ricardo Bofill

The Pioneers

In 1973, Lafite Rothschild was the first to call upon a renowned architect, the Spaniard Ricardo Bofill, to build an ageing cellar which could accommodate 2,200 barrels. Its circular shape with colonnades was innovative. In parallel he installed a stainless steel vat house in complement of course to the oak barrels. He was the precursor of the wine storehouse design!
In 2010, this Premier Grand Cru Classé of Pauillac, seeking a further and more precise winemaking, built two cement tanks, consisting in several dozens of vats of small capacity for a plot-by-plot vinification of the various parcels of Merlot, as well as a divisional vat dedicated to malolactic fermentation, in order to prolong this compartmental selection.
In 1991, Château Branaire Ducru, Premier Grand Cru Classé of Saint-Julien, arranged one of the first gravitating vats. The topography of the ground (5 meters difference in height) was suitable. The reception of the grapes was implanted on that level, the wine storehouse and its tanks located in the basement. The use of gravity preserves the grapes, which are not damaged by drains and pumps, and it signs the end of the extraction of the green tannins, source of astringency. “The more targeted compartmental wine making, by multiplying the small tanks from 60 to 80 hl, gives a better precision to the wines, explains Jean-Dominique Videau, the Cellar master, if it was to be redone, considering the good circulation of the men, the wines, the material and gases, I would not change a thing!”
In 1998 with the Château Malartic-Lagravière, Grand Cru Classé of Graves in white and red, the Bonnie couple built a 'revolutionary' gravitating wine storehouse.
In 2011, at the Grand Tasting, Bruno Laplane, Veronique Bonnie’s husband, explains: “For 14 years, thanks to gravitating wine making, our wines have steadily improved qualitatively; they have gained in concentration and length; their attack is more controlled and their ageing is increased from seven to fifteen years depending on the vintages”.
By opening the way to design, to ergonomics, to gravitating, compartmental, and divisional wine techniques, these châteaux inspired the wine storehouses built over the last 5 years.

La cuverie de Cos d’Estournel

The Wine storehouses of avant-garde

In 2008, Cos d' Estournel, major property of the Medoc, temple dedicated to the wine turned towards the East and avant-gardism by its founder, inaugurated a new vat house made of glass and steel, as well as an underground cellar arranged with modernity and technicality by Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Obviously Cos d'Estournel used the gravitating system, from the picking until the bottling, a new initiative for a vineyard of such a surface area: 91 hectares! The grapes, brought to a sorting table by a system of assembled small cages, are emptied onto a vibrating table.
The juice is treated from top to bottom without pump or pipe.

Le chai de Cos d’Estournel

“The stainless steel tanks have two characteristics: a tronconicity at the base of 18%, therefore a base broader than the top, which makes it possible for the marc hat to be naturally spread out over the entire surface without one needing to break it, and a double wall which ensures the wine an optimal technical inertia. The pumping-.
The latter also allows carrying out blending as well as bottling from the underground cellar “On fragile grapes, the wine making by natural gravity helped us to improve our precision”, concludes Jean-Guillaume Prats.
Another Château, another challenge, other techniques: in Faugères, Grand Cru Classé of Saint-Emilion (37 ha), the construction of a wine storehouse on the commune was essential. At the request of Silvio Denz, owner, the Swiss Mario Botta built a cellar cathedral in 2009, culminating at 14.50 m in height and half-sunken for a gravitating wine making. The space necessary for the wine production is on three levels. On the ground floor are the reception of the grape harvest and the cold rooms. In the 1st basement a fermenting room unites 46 wooden vats as well as 80 barrels devoted to integral wine making. Lastly, in the 2nd basement, is a wine storehouse for maturing which can contain up to 1,000 oak barrels.

over is done with a gravitating unballasting by tank elevators”

Le cuvier de Cheval Blanc

For Silvio Denz, the construction of this new building falls under the permanent research of quality at all the stages of production. Here, the very latest technologies are used: a cold room to lower the bunches’ temperature to 7-8° on reception. Small automated swivelling cages, double sorting, manual as well as optical before the placement of the berries in small vats where they are electronically weighed...
The maturing is done without use of carpet or pump. Alain Dourthe, the production director, gives his point of view:“This wine storehouse which answers to the speci-fications defined by Michel Roland proves to be a very powerful, gravitating working tool that respects the grapes and improves the compartmental selection. Over the three last harvests 2009-2010-2011, the wines preserved their beautiful power, while gaining in elegance and complexity, isn't that the recipe for great wines?” To follow…
More recent and still more innovating, the new wine storehouse of Cheval Blanc inaugurated in June 2011. Like a sculpture, it spreads its white wings with grace and seems to float between the sky and the sea of vines. This vineyard is classified as World Heritage of Humanity and is maintained like a Japanese garden by the teams of the Châteaux who have a historical and talented know-how. From the two types of vines Cabernet Franc and Merlot, it produces a wine of exception, a Premier Grand Cru Classé «A».

Le chai-cathédrale de Mario Botta pour le Château Faugères

In this environment of excellence, the two owners, Bernard Arnault and the Baron Frère, dreamed of a ‘chai d'oeuvre’ as in ‘Chef d'oeuvre’ [masterpiece]. The realization without any doubt lives up to their aspirations because it does not resemble any other. The exterior is a molded concrete structure, so smooth that it looks polished. The inside could not have appeared to be more Zen, so minimalistic. There the concrete evolves side by side with the thick glass flagstone, the stainless steel and unfinished wooden railing. No wire, no pipe disturbs the sight. As the architect Christian de Portzamparc whose reputation exceeded our borders explains: “technology is treated for what it is, a set of necessary nonostentatious tools”.
The ergonomics of this wine storehouse is obvious. In its fermenting room are aligned 52 tanks, amphoras out of concrete to vinify the 52 parcels of the domain. The walls in moucharabieh facilitate natural ventilation. On the lower floor, in the wine ageing storehouse, rhythmed by a colonnade and suspensions out of tubes (leds), the wooden barrels are lined up on rails on the ground in tight rows. The lighting of the building is measured to avoid waste. HQE certified, this building manages energy, the waste and the comfort of the people who work there. In short, this wine storehouse reaches a high level of elegance for a wine of exception. As the press attachée Bernadette Visioz explains, “there will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ Cheval Blanc! …”.

Château Cheval Blanc

The Projects in progress

Grand Cru Classé of Saint-Emilion, surrounded by very beautiful properties such as Cheval Blanc, L’Evangile, and la Conseillante, La Dominique also make innovative architectural work. Its wine storehouse, to start building in the beginning of March, will have the shape of a futuristic vessel splitting the sea of vines in the prolongation of the château. It will be covered in red reflective metal plates, and will create an effect of reversed mirror inspired by the works of the artist Anish Kapoor. Never seen before! To build it, its owner, Clément Fayat, a giant of the construction and civil engineering, turned towards Jean Nouvel because he had previously worked with him and that this Master is a reference in the history of architecture, in furniture, and even art.
The artistic side of this building and the name of Jean Nouvel are bankable; they are the cherry on the cake. Other true reasons prevailed with the starting of this building site. The vineyard having passed from 17 hectares in 1990, to 24 in 2009 and in the future, Yannick Evenou, the director, naturally needed an extension of fermenting room from 1.800 hl to 3.600 hl. To still obtain more elegant wines, he wanted to technically raise himself up to the level of his neighbours. That's the reason for the construction of a gravitating vat with transfer by escalator of berries to the top of the tanks. The wines containing more alcohol than twenty years ago, one needs cold rooms blocking the fermentation of the grapes, before their placement in tanks insulated for maceration and extraction from the fruit flavours, having neither the solvent effect of alcohol nor its taste of exacerbated tannin. The tanks will be of lesser capacity, from 70 to 100 hl, manufactured out of stainless steel with double insulated sidings, source of thermal inertia and optimum safeguarding of the wine. For a good compartmental management, each batch will have its own tank whose format will correspond to the capacity of the parcel. Finally to give life to the property, this new building will offer a surface of 750 sqm of which 300 sqm are covered and 450 sqm as a terrace with a panoramic view on the surrounding vineyards around Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, like Petrus, Figeac, Cheval Blanc…
Are you up for a visit in the summer of 2013?
Another wine storehouse will be born this year in Pauillac, the 2nd Cru Classé Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, on which its general director, Sylvie Cazes, does not wish to raise the veil, work starting only in May!