In
house research from Château
Margaux
A first growth studies organics/biodynamics, destemming/stems and
corks/screwcaps
London, Febraury 21, 2012
Paul Pontallier (left) with Margaux
commercial manager Aurelien Valance
In what was probably a first, Paul
Pontallier of Château
Margaux came to London to present a tasting based on some of the
in-house research that has taken place at this first-growth Bordeaux
property.
The event was hosted by Yvon Mau, an
important Bordeaux negociant, and compered by Richard Bampfield MW.
Gathered were many of the great and good of the London wine scene,
and a few extras (like me).
‘Experimenting is not news in
Bordeaux,’ said Pontallier as he introduced the session. ‘If we
are where we are it is because our predecessors were great
experimenters. They were first great observers: they observed the
terroir and fine-tuned how to grow the vines.’
Pontallier keenly believes in the need
for proper experimentation rather than just random implementation of
the latest ideas. ‘So much knowledge is now available; so many
trends go by—but few remain,’ he emphasized. ‘In order to be
able to discriminate the knowledge or technology that will be able
to make a positive step, we need to experiment. At the level we are
it is much easier to let quality go down rather than up.’
He added that he’s impressed by the
research that Bordeaux University does, but that they don’t always
study subjects relevant to the particular interests of Château Margaux. So just over 10 years ago,
Margaux started their own R&D department, which now numbers two
employees. That’s an impressive commitment for just one producer.
‘Lots of people follow trends or their
own beliefs, but this doesn’t belong to our culture,’ emphasized
Pontallier. ‘Our culture is based on experimental science. We need
to experiment very seriously and not draw conclusions too fast. We
repeat the experiments. We practice doubt.’
‘It is important not to take our own a prioris for granted,’ he said. ‘Wines are probably as
disappointing as people. We must be ready for big surprises.’
Pontallier was quick to point out the
frustrations of wine research. One of these is that there are just
so many variables involved in growing vines and making wine. ‘The
problem here is isolating just one factor. You are playing with
several factors.’
Another is that in trials you end up
having to do microvinifications, making very small quantities of
wine. This is quite difficult, and sometimes the results can be
counfounded by the fact that many microvinified wines are poor,
making it hard to see the differences caused by the experimental
variables. Fortunately, Pontallier’s team are now very good at
doing these microvinifications.
‘As soon as you experiment in detail
you realise that it is not clear,’ warns Pontallier. ‘Things are
always more complicated than one would think.’
Trial
1: comparing organics, biodynamics and conventional viticulture
‘We want to get closer and closer to
organics,’ says Pontallier. ‘This is something I started 25
years ago. We are very close to organics, and haven’t used any
pesticides or insecticides for more than 10 years. We still spray
chemicals against mildew, powdery mildew and botrytis though. Could
we do this differently?’
‘I hope that in two to three years we
might be 100% organic for the grand vin, but not for the second,
third or fourth wine. The very best plots are the ones with the best
drainage and the least vigour, and which are much less sensitive to
mildew and powdery mildew. We will start there.’
Pontallier
is a little sceptical about the claims of biodynamics, but he has
trialled it with the help of a consultant, alongside organics and
conventional viticulture. ‘Most of the difference between organic
farming and biodynamic farming looks religious from an outsider’s
point of view,’ he says.
The plot chosen for the trial was a
slightly second-rate plot, with Cabernet Sauvignon that has never
made it into the first wine. ‘It is a little bit vigorous. We
wanted to put ourselves not in the easiest situation, but a more
difficult one.’
The trial started in 2008, so this wine,
a 2010, was in the third year of management. There are replicates of
each treatment. The trial is now in its fifth year, and you’d
expect the differences, if any, to be more pronounced with each
vintage. ‘Farmers say that the soil has to recover from its
chemical history,’ says Pontallier. ‘This probably makes
sense.’
He can’t see any differences between
the actual vines, though. ‘Our biodynamic consultant can see
differences, but I think he looks with religious eyes. Our soils
have not been totally mistreated, so maybe the differences aren’t
huge.’
One of the problems with organic
viticulture is the reliance on copper-based treatments for dealing
with powdery mildew. ‘We use much less copper than in the past,’
says Pontallier. ‘In the past we used 8–12 kg per hectare and
sometimes more. 1 kg/hectare is now the maximum. There has been an
improvement in spraying technology and we have also realised that
more is not useful. One reason that switching to organics is now
feasible is because we can now use less copper. Without such a
reduction it would have been unthinkable.’
The three trial wines were tasted blind.
I much preferred wine number 1, which was a bit more elegant and
less green than the other two. Then of the other two, which were
more supple, I preferred number 2, which was a bit less green.
Pontallier prefers wine 2. Around the room, there was a spread of
opinions.
It turned out that wine 1 was the
biodynamic wine, and wine 2 the organic wine. Alcohol of the
biodynamic wine was 13.4, the organic was 13.6 and conventional
13.8. No indication of statistical significance was given.
Trial
2 Stems or destemming?
This was involving a better wine: a 2009
Cabernet Sauvignon from a plot which, in good years, makes it into
the first wine.
‘We wanted to see how important it is
to destem,’ explained Pontallier. ‘Our tradition has been to
almost totally destem. From the early 20th Century at
Margaux destemming was a standard procedure.’
He points out that some are now
suggesting that using some stems could be a good thing. And on the
other side, some estates have become more fastidious about removing
even the tiniest bits of stem. Margaux destemming leaves some tiny
pieces of stems in the ferment, such that 0.03–0.05% of the
ferment is stems.
In this trial, the standard Margaux
destemming was compared with 1% stem additions, and 1% stem
additions but with the stems cut into tiny pieces. The wines were
once more tasted blind.
To Pontallier, the results from this
trial are obvious. The current approach produces the best wines, and
the 1% stems in pieces the worst. But he is still cautious about
generalizing the result. ‘We shouldn’t draw too general
conclusions. For this wine I think destemming works, but for other
plots, such as a rich wine with soft tannins, it might be
different.’
Trial
3 Cork versus screwcap
Pontallier has approached the issue of
alternative closures with appropriate caution. ‘We might be
exchanging one problem for another: this happens many times in
life.’Margaux have been trialling alternative closures since 2002,
but the trials with synthetic corks didn’t last long as the wines
quickly oxidised. ‘After two or three years it was a disaster.’
‘We all know the problems of cork,’
he says. ‘We have all been so frustrated and disappointed by
corked bottles. The proportion of corked bottles has certainly gone
down over the last 20 years. We have the best corks but it is still
unacceptable that there is a single bottle that is corked.’
‘We thought that any other closure
would be welcome as long as it is for the better. We are not afraid
of changing as long as we are sure it is for the better and not for
the worse.’
Trials began in 2002 with Pavillon Rouge
(second wine) and have taken in other wines over time, including the
Grand Vin. But when news got out that Margaux was experimenting with
screwcaps, it all got a bit crazy. ‘I talked to some people about
our experiments with screwcaps, and once this news had been
published a lot of people thought that we had decided to bottle the
whole or half the crop with screwcaps,’ recalls Pontallier. ‘I
received plenty of mails. Half of them said “you are crazy” and
the other half congratulated us that we had moved to screwcaps and
that this was the modern way.’
‘Using a screwcap for white or red
wines when you are sure they are all drunk after two or three years
makes a lot of sense,’ says Pontallier. ‘But for wines that we
expect to go through a very special evolution for 10, 15, 20 or 30
years, we don’t exactly know. We are not brave (or stupid) enough
to use screwcaps without this knowledge.’
This trial involved two wines—a white
and a red—and three different closures. Good quality natural cork
of the type used for all top wines, and two screwcaps—one of which
Pontallier describes as gas permeable (presumably with the saranex
liner), and one of which is impermeable (the tin/saran liner). The
latter is the type used almost exclusively for fine wines in
Australia and New Zealand.
The red wine trial involved the third
wine from 2003. This is a wine that at that time would have been
sold off in bulk. Now it is bottled as a third wine. Unfortunately
this was a poor wine indeed: quite oxidative and developed and with
a rustic, almost medicinal edge that suggested some Brettanomyces.
There is also the problem that natural cork is quite variable, and
so we were comparing the screwcapped wines with just one expression
of natural cork. Was this a good cork with very low oxygen
transmission, or one with a bit more?
Of the three wines, I preferred number 2,
and then number 3. Number 1 was my least favourite, as it was the
most evolved. It turned out that 2 was natural cork, 3 was tin/saran
screwcap and 1 was saranex screwcap. But none of the wines were
particularly good, and there wasn’t a huge amount of difference
between 2 and 3. A small majority in the room preferred 3 to 2.
Fewer liked number 1. But this is with a wine that was probably a
bit tired and somewhat oxidative when it was bottled in 2005, and
which isn’t destined for long ageing. There’s a reason Margaux
were selling it in bulk.
For the white wines, a 2004 second wine,
the differences between the bottles was more marked. I liked number
1, which was the outlier. It was aromatic with some breadth to the
palate, combining grapefruit and honey notes. I thought it was the
most developed, and the best for current drinking. Numbers 2 and 3
were closer together, and really quite different wines to number 1.
Wine 2 had a slight chemical-tasting edge to it, and showed fresh,
pithy grapefruit characters. I felt it the freshest, but not the
nicest. Wine 3 was probably my favourite, and was lively with fresh
grapefruit character.
It turned out that 1 was cork, 2 was
saranex screwcap and 3 was tin/saran screwcap. Pontallier, rather
perplexingly, suggested that 2 and 3 were showing traces of
oxidation and that 1 was the freshest, and his preferred. This was
not the view held by the majority of the room. The key take home
message is that the closure changes the wine. So which wine do you
prefer?
It is unlikely that Margaux will be
bottled under screwcap any time soon. ‘We are also experimenting
with the first wine and Pavillon,’ says Pontallier, ‘but it is
too early: 10 years is nothing for these wines.’
‘Our wines have an extraordinary
potential to remain fresh for as long as a century or even more. So
we have to be pretty sure if we are going to change the closure.’