Daring blends, atypical names, an original aromatic signature. Four entities are now united under the brand Invindia, a signature that wants itself to be atypical on the right bank of Bordeaux.
Invindia, the wine subsidiary of V&B, now totals 102 hectares of vines with 4 estates: Château Haut-Meyreau in Entre-Deux-Mers, Château Bellevue Malartic in Bordeaux, La Vieille Croix in Fronsac and Château Le Conte in Saint-Emilion. From the moment he bought his first estate, Château Haut-Meyreau in Entre-Deux-Mers, Jean-Pierre Derouet has been mingling anticonformism and re-invention with strong cultural breaks. It is true that on the traditional right bank, so reasonable, the small Bordeaux have difficulties. Difficulties to sell and to impose their identity. Jean-Pierre Derouet decided straightaway to shake up the traditions. He, the guy from Mayenne, full of energy, former boxer, who founded the brand V&B (160 shops across France now) and a network of salesmen who sell 250,000 bottles every year, first boasts Epicurean and meditation wines, and labels that assert his free-thinking spirit. He implements plot selection for twenty wines in total for which the well-informed wine lover become wine grower draws his inspiration from his intuition. Dare in order to seduce. He crafts “Les raisins de la colère” (a natural wine) that boosts the palate used to a standardization of the taste of wine, “L'Aurore” (10 organic hectares) as those who dream are guided by misty mornings, “La Lubie d’Arsimelont” (Fronsac) after the name of a dark lord who used to burn his neighbours' crop, killed by the Duke of Mayenne sent by the king to curtail his whims, “Sirventes » (Vin de Pays), a reference to the short anarchist poems sung by the Occitan minstrels of the Middle Ages … In the glass too, Jean-Pierre boldly bets on being different. He turns his Bordeaux “Bellevue Malartic” into a top-of-the-range wine with green harvest, thining out of the leaves, new barrels, and his “Lubie” from Fronsac into a fruity wine … Little by little the group extends until his latest acquisition last year: Château Le Conte, 4 hectares in Saint-Emilion Grand Cru. There too, Jean-Pierre Derouet willingly remains sidelined, shaking up the order set by the big brands. The estate uses a Rothschild-style label with a painting that will change every vintage. Given a mark of 14.5 in Le Point for the 2017. A master stroke for a first vintage. Who also signs a new strategy: “know-how and make it known”. And though he holds the reins of the 4 estates and comes regularly, especially for the blending, the team has just changed. Patrick Clarens, who was there since the beginning of the adventure, has left his position to Hugues Laborde, a young agricultural engineer “with a beautiful energy”, Jean-Pierre specifies. For new cuvées … that will not compromise on commonness.
Bénédicte Chapard
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