A Harvest Visit to Château du Val d’Or, 2012
My harvest-time trip to Bordeaux was turning out to be informative, even if my tastings – whether of fruit or of unfermented juice – did not instil a great sense of confidence in the 2012 vintage. In previous instalments of this informal and loosely held together series of reports I have described tasting the fruit alongside Frédéric Massie, a Derenoncourt consultant, in the Médoc appellation at Château Preuillac, and I also recounted my tasting of the first Merlot juices in the Haut-Médoc appellation, during a harvest visit to Sociando-Mallet. A visit to Château Brown did instil some hope, as although the reds were at the time not harvested, the barely fermented white wines were brimming with character and mouth-watering acidity. Now, though, it was time to leave Bordeaux’s left bank behind and head over to the right bank, in particular to St Emilion, and to Château du Val d’Or.
Château du Val d’Or is an estate I have visited once before, many years ago now, although I never got around to adding a full profile to the site. That is a mistake I will rectify very soon though, and so in this report I will restrict myself solely to reporting in the harvest activities. But, to set the scene, we should at least consider the location of the estate, which sits on the bank of a sweeping bend in the Dordogne. On my most recent visit the waters of the Dordogne were high, swirled brown with mud and sediment, and they were carrying along a lot of debris, branches, leaves, twigs and other flotsam (and the occasional hardy kayaker), the result of recent heavy rain further upstream.
More pertinent than this temporary ‘high tide’ is the soil, as here we are in Vignonet, down on the sandy plains of St Emilion. This is not one of St Emilion’s grander terroirs. Just half a kilometre to the north-west is the other great success story of this St Emilion underdog-region, Château Teyssier, where Englishman Jonathan Maltus turns out thousands of cases of good value wine under the Teyssier label, as well as limited-production grander cuvées, from more exalted terroirs up on the St Emilion plateau. Here at Val d’Or it is Philippe Bardet (pictured) who runs the show, and as at Teyssier the aim is to produce a wine of the highest possible quality bearing in mind its origins, while never losing sight of its ultimate selling price. And when it comes to achieving that goal, Philippe is not afraid to experiment and use new technologies where appropriate, including the use of machines both for harvesting and for sorting the fruit.
Please log in to continue reading: