Queens of Bordeaux

Elegant structure, charming and sophisticated, with a complex style – and just wait until you taste the wine these women make.

By Chris Johns
Illustrations by Tara Hardy

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I arrive hot on the heels of a Japanese tour group leaving Château Thieuley in the wine region of Bordeaux. Third-generation winemakers Sylvie and Marie Courselle are clearing away the glasses and admiring little gifts of writing paper and sweets. I silently berate myself for not having been as gracious as the Japanese and wish I had brought gifts – like, say, a diamond ring or the keys to my house.

The twentysomething sisters hold diplomas in oenology and agronomy and have worked in vineyards in Australia, California and Spain. Now they’re bringing those lessons home. “The wine that is in fashion at the moment is fruity. But in Bordeaux, the strength is in the quality of the tannins when they age,” says Sylvie. “We like to adapt to the [popular] taste but we won’t change everything. Otherwise we lose our identity.” Their palates are no doubt influenced by their father, Francis Courselle, a professor of oenology who brought Thieuley to prominence in the 1970s. But Sylvie ventures, “I think women prefer soft tannins. When we taste with my father, he prefers very powerful and rich wines and we prefer softer, more structured wines.”

Although you wouldn’t know it from the Thieuley’s reds, with roasted fruit flavours and a cedar bouquet, or their delicate and creamy whites, Bordeaux wine is suffering an identity crisis. Grapes have been cultivated in this famous region since as early as the first century BC and the area is responsible for over one-quarter (some 660 million bottles annually) of France’s appellation contrôlée wine. Traditionally, what makes Bordeaux wines great is their ability to express terroir, that intangible quality that reflects a vineyard’s soil and landscape. The current fashion in wine – highly manipulated and extracted fruit-forward, oak-aged wines that often suppress terroir – has not been good to Bordeaux. This has led to… tensions in the region. Like wine growers staging protests over falling prices and bricking in the entrance to the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux last December. Property prices in the region reached their lowest levels on modern record.

French television showed only men doing the bricking, incidentally. I mention that because, amid the chaos and tension, a few châteaux are still producing fantastic wine, and a disproportionate number of them – disproportionate only because it has long been a male preserve – are run by women. Could it be possible, I ask myself, that women simply have better palates than men? I’ve heard it enough over the years at tastings. Wine writer Tim Patterson, who has written extensively on the subject, says that women are overrepresented – nearly two to one – in the 25 percent of the population with the most tastebuds, the “super tasters.” “Women figure out food and wine matches, even if they’re not trained. They’re just better at talking about flavours.” With 60 percent of household wine purchases made by women, wines made by women, geared to women’s palates, should do well commercially.

Here’s my own theory about the success of the women winemakers of Bordeaux: They’re willing to experiment with new ideas that respect tradition without being afraid of change. And frankly, they bring a sense of style to the region’s wines that has been sorely lacking. That they’re accomplished and beautiful only adds to the wines’ allure. As a man who has always loved the classic Bordeaux wines, and who one day fully expects to marry a wine heiress, I know what I’m talking about. But I had to taste a lot more wine and meet a lot more winemakers – just to be, you know, sure.

My guide, Pascale Verdeun – herself the doyenne of Château Monbrison in the Médoc – assembles a group lunch for me at Restaurant Le Lion d’Or, which is to winemakers in the Médoc what The Ivy is to Hollywood powerbrokers. Cabinets lining the walls contain special bottles from neighbouring châteaux for the owners to drink with Jean-Paul Barbier’s sophisticated cuisine. Joining us are wine region promoters Florence Raffard and Marie-Christine Cronenberger, and Martine Cazeneuve, owner of Château Paloumey.

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