“When you go for too much, you lose the little things,” said Aymeric de Gironde. “The idea is to pull back a bit and get further into the details. To bring minerality, and the soils here are unique, into the wine.”
De Gironde told me that back in 2019 during a visit to Château Troplong-Mondot in St.-Emilion.
De Gironde had been hired by the new owners to give the property a fresh direction. The previous owners (the Valette-Pariente family) had pristine vineyards—that wasn’t the issue. During their tenure they had leaned into a riper, fuller-blown expression of the wine though. In some years, that dovetailed perfectly with the vintage—the stunning 1998 is a prime example. In other years, however, the style easily dominated the overall impression of the wine. The wines weren’t bad, but they were a bit opaque and more about the hand of the winemaker than a pure expression of place.
That’s where de Gironde came in. Aiming for a wine that was more transparent of the site, he set to tweaking a lot of things in the cellar. Among them was doubling the number of tanks while reducing their size for a more detailed vinification. He also dropped the percentage of new oak and worked to finish the blends just after their malolactic instead of later, typically just before bottling, a technique that is thought to help the wine integrate more fully during its élevage.
Today these are considered simple changes, and they’ve been employed at an increasing number of estates. At the time, though, they were risky. Changes to how a vineyard is farmed or a wine is made don’t show up right away. In terms of the consumer, that could mean years after a shift is initialized. And if it doesn’t work out? Well, you don’t want to be the one responsible for damaging the reputation of a well-known estate. It takes years to establish a track record and build a brand.
But wine is about risks. The wine world wouldn’t be where it is today without them. When you stop taking risks and just do the same thing you’ve always done, you get passed by.
I recently opened a bottle of the ’18 Troplong-Mondot, the first full vintage under de Gironde’s direction. It proved that the risks were more than worth it. The wine was full of life—not surprising since a six-year-old Bordeaux is still young. But it was its energy that stood out. It wasn’t just rich or youthfully fruit-filled. It had tension and vibration.
Its fruit was copious, but pure and fresh. And there was a distinctly ferrous minerality rippling underneath, extending the lengthy finish. I rated it 94 points back on release and it more than acquitted itself.
Troplong-Mondot is now decidedly among the vanguard in Bordeaux, a growing cluster of estates that have embraced holistic farming practices, tweaked their approaches in the cellar and are producing wines of focus, freshness and drive.
I’ve written before about how ground zero for the vanguard is in St.-Emilion, and primarily atop the limestone plateau, where châteaus Canon, Clos Fourtet, Bélair-Monange, Beau-Sejour Bécot, Berliquet and Pavie-Macquin have been among those leading the charge. The ranks are growing, too, with Beauséjour, now under the guidance of Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse, showing the results of dramatic changes. It’s ironic that St.-Emilion, formerly the epicenter of the garagiste movement that aimed for wines of power and extraction in the 1990s, is now the home of this new, lighter-handed approach.
There are ripple effects outside of this cluster as well. Château Cheval Blanc has made hands down the wine of the vintage in 2022. A warm and sunny year, 2022 resulted in wines of richly layered fruit. Had this vintage come around 10 or 15 years ago, there would have been many excellent wines, but I suspect also more than a few overly muscular, top-heavy versions as well. By pulling back a bit, as de Gironde noted, Cheval Blanc and a few other prominent estates are making the most dynamic wines they’ve ever made, including both Château Palmer in Margaux and Château Pichon-Lalande in Pauillac.
The vanguard is where the action is in Bordeaux. The risks they took are paying big dividends, and they are starting to pass by those estates that rely on the status quo.
Senior editor James Molesworth has been with Wine Spectator since 1997.
