Garage wines

What is a garage wine?

"This is wine Haute Couture," says without hesitation Michel Rolland, consultant and advocate of garage wines, who orchestrated their expansion into the global market.

This is a new "jeweller's" approach to wine-making: on tiny acreage, in small batches, without mechanical equipment.

Historically, the first wine of this kind was Chateau Le Pin, which was first produced 20 years ago in Pomerol (2 ha). But the first wine to become famous under the name garage wine was Chateau Valandraud from St. Emilion (1.5 ha), produced by Jean-Luc Thunevin, a former bank clerk who took up winemaking. The name is explained by the fact that because of a lack of a dedicated cellar and the microscopic volume produced, the wine was made in a garage.

Usually the operation involves a tiny winery or plot, seldom in excess of 2-4 ha, at unprestigious locations. With this scale of vinery operation, the vintner works as a gardener, sometimes taking care of vines as if they were pot plants.

"I invented nothing," says Thunevin, "I just reintroduced old techniques. This is a simple task, you just have to stop thinking about time, and you choose only the best and ripest grapes."

Plus a low yield: about 20 hl from a hectare instead of the standard 50. A straightforward recipe; it does, however, require backbreaking labour and almost surgical precision. Thunevin makes the vine "suffer": as early as July he brings in "green yield"*  with three-quarters of the grape bunches removed from the vine; following this, he cuts the leaves first from the eastern side and then, prior to harvesting, all the remaining leaves to achieve maximum exposure of the grapes to the sun. Due to small acreage, the harvesting is done by hand, in a very short space of time (one day) and in the best weather possible...

Yes, this is indeed "tailor-made" wine. "Custom tailoring" so to speak. This spells out a return to manual labour, a craftsmanship in the higher meaning of the word, small batch production, minor crus from the producer. This is a mix of the peasant's sweat, the barrel maker's craft** and the vintner's personality. A rejection of mechanization and a return to the terroir. "A combine harvester is the worst thing I've seen in my career," says Michel Rolland, calling for respect for the wine stock. Bernard Margrez, owner of the Malesan brand, picks grapes by hand for his Magrez Faumbrauge garage wine, and Jean-Luis Despagne puts whole grapes into fermenters...

Vinification in a garage, or micro-win-emaking, is high-precision, intricate work for an of oenologist, which produces highly concentrated, sophisticated, amazing wines, which so far have no history of their own, with their future behaviour hard to predict. At the moment, it can be difficult to drink such heavy wines, usually unfiltered, full of tannins, as they are too sticky, kind of pungent, and rough.

Uber Bouteille, former president of the interdepartmental council for Bordeaux wines and head of INAO*** commission on the terroir and environment problems, said in April 1999: "There are certain extreme production methods, which should be researched in terms of their acceptability to the consumer with reference to product definition."

In plain English this means: "are such products wine?"
At the same time, Robert Parker, whose opinions lead to shakeups in the world market prices for Bordeaux cru on a regular basis, and who was the first to bring Valandraud to the very top of the charts, impressed as he was with its richness, complexity and harmony, said that "it is already among the great Margaux".

The Web spread the word about "the world's best wines from a minute terroir", bringing the spotlight on their rarity (less than 10,000 bottles!). High-profile articles in the press caught the attention of wealthy connoisseurs and collectors of rare wines abroad. There emerged a bullish micro-market, with prices spiralling out of control, driven by a gap between demand and supply. Each of the 10,000 bottles of Chateau Valandraud costs 15 euros to produce and leaves the estate at a price of about 70 euros to be sold in London at 285-450 euros to US and Japanese customers. Compare this price to 4-7 euros en primeur for "standard" St. Emilion grand cru.
Overwhelmed by such success, quite a few producers dropped whatever they were doing to rush into producing garage wines, particularly in St. Emilion: Chateau La Mondotte, producing 30 hl/ha on 4.5 ha, spreads the "garage bug" among an ever widening circle of pioneers such as actress Carole Bouquet. She bought a small plot of 2.2 hectares in Lussac St. Emilion, clearly in order to produce garage wine of premium quality. It will become commercially available starting with the 2002 yield.

Many followed this example, not always producing super quality, but always generating super prices. With their gatecrashing of the scene of exclusive wine making, they tread on the toes of those who are living off the old privileges. The latter retort by calling the garage wines Chateau Bidon****. Many of these garage wines are produced with participation from Thunevin himself or members of his family; a majority takes advantage of oenological consultations of guru Michel Rolland of Lebourne. Incidentally, the term "garage wine" is unofficial and usually used to refer to the wines of the right bank of the Gironde, sometimes to Bordeaux wines.
In France, descriptions of such rare, exclusive wines more often employ the concept of microcuvee***** to draw a parallel to microsurgery and microbiology. I expect the Russian language will adopt the name "garage wine", and not only because the idea of keeping a stock of homemade wine in a garage appeals to us, but also because the word "cuvee" is not readily rendered into Russian. I think it will be borrowed by experts, as happened to the word terroir, which was borrowed without translation.

* Vendange verte, or "green yield" literally, means early pruning of clusters to keep down the yield.
** Garagists often stress that they use Seguin-Moreau barrels to vinify and age wine.
*** INAO: Institut National des Appellations d'Origine.
**** Probably an allusion to the ludicrously small quantity of the product yield.
***** From the French "cuvee", fermenting tub, wine of one vintage, one composition, one fermentation. The Russian language has words of the same root: «кювета» and «кювет».

So micro-cuvee is a wine produced in extremely small batches (400-1,500 cases a year) from the yield of a small vinery (not more than 6 ha), targeted for special treatment by a master vintner who puts into it all his talent, know-how and inspiration. The concept of micro-cuvee is not new. They say that many a victory at tasting events and competitions was won with the choicest samples, the bulk output remaining frankly speaking "below par". I sometimes ask myself: could it be that Prince Golitsyn's legendary bubbly, which defeated the Champagne wines during a blind tasting at the Paris exhibition, was a wee bit "garage"? Today, serious trade shows feature samples of specified-volume yields, with medals awarded to the wines that are scheduled for large-scale distribution. The garage wines remain piece-work production. This is the Formula 1 of winemaking; these are prototypes whose concepts will probably be implemented in future crus.

In the USA, micro-cuvees are known under the name of boutique wines, or cult wines, with everybody interpreting these terms to suit their purposes. Retail prices for such wines do not rise above 150 dollars. Some believe that if a winery produces less than 2,000 cases a year, its output may be called boutique wine.
The California Wine Institute does not actually use this term, but classifies the Californian wineries in the following manner:
– small: up to 5,000 cases (some 450 wineries);
– medium: 5 to 500,000 cases (some 425 wineries);
–major Commercial: over 500,000 cases (28 wineries). These are giants such as Mondavi, Gallo, Sutter Home, Kendall Jackson, and Berringer.

It would be appropriate to note that small wineries here have no resemblance to our definition. More often than not, it is large facilities which produce exclusive wines in California in the form of special limited editions.
Here are a few examples.

Louis Martini produces about 150,000 cases of wine a year, but only 800 cases using Folle Blanche, a variety of grape that is very seldom used for wine making. This is an excellent wine, "clean and crisp with flavours of lemon blossoms, honeysuckle and grapefruit, yielding a creamy mid-palate with a slightly sandy finish".
Another great boutique wine find is Tempranillo by Turnbull Winery, which produces 20,000 to 25,000 cases of wine a year, but only 400-500 cases of Tempranillo. It retails for about $35 a bottle, and is worth every cent of it.
Floodgate produces 2,000 cases a year of Pinot Noir and Gewurztraminer combined (19-30 dollars), and nothing else. They have their own labels, but they are part of Belvedere. Another Belvedere winery with its own label is Bradford Mountain, producing about 4,000 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel (approximately $40). These boutique wines are rated very highly.

Based on well-established definitions, half of Burgundy produces micro-cuvee. Some make wines without a press, without filtering, with elements of biodynamics. "Since time immemorial Burgundy has been producing it without calling it 'pantry wine' or 'doghouse wine,' says Michel Rolland ironically. The important thing is whether they develop it based on their terroir, reveal its nature, revere it.

As part of the garage movement, Jean-Luc Thunevin founded a trading house to sell the wines of his associates, who can be found in large numbers outside the bounds of Bordeaux, too.

For example, Pingus from Ribera del Duero is produced on a 4 ha plot using fully mature Tempranillo grape from old vines. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in new barrels and aging for 18 to 20 months. The winery produces a second brand, Flor de Pingus, so its manners already resemble those of major grand crus!

Baron Andrea Franchetti, owner of Tenuta di Tritoro in Tuscany, works with cabernet, merlot, and petit verdo varieties and only uses new French barrels. His Palazzi wine is produced in batches of 800 cases and has already twice (in 1998 and 1999) scored 93 points out of 100 in Parker's evaluation. As for Harlan Estate, Parker awarded its proprietary red wine 100 out of 100 twice (for the 1994 and 1997 vintages) and supplied the following commentary: "Harlan Estate 1997 is one of the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines I have ever tasted... Does anyone wonder if wines such as the 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, 1947 Cheval Blanc, and the 1961 Latour had similar personalities at two years of age?" He also notes that with 1,000-case production, it adds 25 dollars to the price with each new yield. The 1996 vintage was priced at $125, the 1997 at $150, the 1998 at $175.

The second wine of this winery is called Maiden and produced in collaboration with the same Michel Rolland in the quantity of a mere 700 cases. Parker described it, in addition to other rapt comments, as a "blockbuster". Starting in 1999, the winery introduced fermentation in wooden vats. This is all the more surprising seeing that Bordeaux Chateaux are vinified in stainless tanks with temperature control. Wooden vats have long been decommissioned and serve as tourist exhibits; it is only St. Emilion garagists who still use them. Not all advanced vintners by far want to be considered producers of garage wines. In the summer of 2002, I visited a cult wine maker who up-ended the system of Spanish wine pricing, Alvaro Palacios. Having seen the way they work the L'Ermita terraces and, more importantly, having tasted this concentrated, thick 2000 wine, full of tannins and burning in the mouth, as it were, I asked: "Is this a garage wine?" The answer was in the negative.

I think the reason was that his bodega, soaring as it was over a mountainous landscape, when seen against a backdrop of the breathtaking view from the terrace of the tasting room, would make an appropriate illustration for a textbook on modern architecture rather than a garage of any sort. Nothing prevents his wines from being sold at 150 euros a bottle. You could not drive away the customers with a cattle prod.

Another region of winemaking nonconformists is Tuscany, which is also in no hurry to proclaim itself a totally garagist territory. Having said that, they do have something in common. Much like the Tuscany trouble- makers, the ringleader of garagists, Jean-Luc Thunevin, became the target of sanctions by the all-powerful INAO. In 2001, after six months of discussions, his Chateau Valandraud got downgraded to the level of a table wine* for the sole reason that he used plastic sheeting to cover the vines three weeks before harvesting to prevent water from touching the grapes. This system was one of the ingredients of Thunevin's success formula. So the Bordeaux palette, which earlier received garage wines, has now been enriched with a designer table wine. Cruel and unusual punishment?

"Yes," agrees Thunevin, "if what I produce is table wine the label may feature neither vintage, nor name or address."
It is an impossible situation for a product that can hardly be called ready-to-use as it is obviously meant for aging and collecting. Thunevin is nonplussed: "Such methods were used on some vineries of the Chateau Margot second wine, Pavillon Rouge. I filed an applica-tion and the syndicate as well as an INAO local technical committee granted permission to stage experiments on one hectare in 1997 and 1998, and a tolerant attitude was also shown in 1999. And then like a bolt from the blue I receive a notification that the 2000 vintage, including the yield from Pleasance, Valandraud's best plot, has been downgraded to the level of a table wine."
Rene Renou, president of INAO, believes, however, that the decision is well justified.

The INAO arguments would have made sense if they had dealt with overproduction, the density of planting, or weedkiller use; if the anti-technology measures had targeted fluctuating osmosis or vacuum evaporation in Medoc or other oenologic tricks, or; if the state-appointed aesthetes and ecologists had focused on the spreading of stinking sludge with a heavy metal content or plastic residue, which has defaced the landscapes of Champagne, and nowadays is expanding into the Loire valley.

To be sure, Jean-Luc Thunevin has found a way out and is successfully marketing his L'Interdit du Val and L'Interdit du Bad** wines, which have received scandalous (i.e. super effective) advertising.

* * *

What attitude should the reader adopt towards garage wines? Well, what's his attitude towards Haute Couture clothes or Formula 1? If money is no object, enjoy. If things are otherwise, be advised that you are not alone: you are joined by 99.9% of the population of the planet, who nevertheless get a kick out of using words like "defile" and "pit stop". My attitude is exactly the same. These are not wines meant for drinking; after all, we find it natural to drink wines that are ready-to-serve. A Frenchman hit the nail on the head when he said: "Wine is something you drink, not spread on bread. Super concentrated, tanniny, unfiltered wines lose their original purpose, which is to allay thirst, freshen, wash down our food." But what is prét-а-porter without haute couture?

* Vin de table P means table wine; lowest rank in the European classification of wines.
** The names L'Interdit du Val and L'Interdit du Bad refer to the prohibition to feature the brands Chateau Valandraud and Clos Badon Thunevin on the label of downgraded wine.

Who is who

Michel Rolland is a friend and associate of Robert Parker. He is the mastermind behind the garage wine movement, consulting oenologist (viniculturist). An advocate of the merlot variety and low yield. He has a laboratory in Pomerol, which provides services to about 700 Bordeaux chateaux, with wine giants such as Smith Haute Haut Lafitte, Pontet-Canet, Pape Clement, Angelus, and Haut Brion among them.

He owns several chateau estates on the right bank of the Gironde: Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol, Bertineau in Lalande- de-Pomerol, Fontenil in Fronsac (recently downgraded) and La Grande Clotte in Lussac. He has taken part as a consultant in major projects in Argentina (Trapiche, Norton, Vistalba), Chile (Casa Lapostolle), California (Harlan Estate, Newton, Araujo, Quintessa), as well as in Spain, Hungary, Italy, and South Africa
Jean-Luc Thunevin is a French-man from Algeria, a former bank employee. 15 years ago he marketed a tiny quantity of Chateau Valandraud wine from his estate with acreage of a mere 2 ha. In his experiments he relied on support from master vintner Allen Votier from Chateau Ozone.

He gave a jolt to the then stagnating Bordeaux district of St. Emilion by demonstrating that moderate soil can be made to produce a great wine that can fetch a handsome price. Soon thereafter, introduced by Michel Rolland, it was noticed by Robert Parker, who has since been giving Chateau Valandraud 100 points out of 100 on a regular basis. Thanks to this wine, the world has recognized and encouraged the phenomenon of garage wine
Robert Parker at 53 is one of the most respected and influential experts in the field of wine. He publishes the Wine Advocate magazine. His guides to the wines of the world, and those of France, Burgundy and Bordeaux are more than simple handbooks: they are manuals for buyers and vintners alike. Hallmarks: love of merlot variety, St. Emilion wines, a promotion of unfiltered, concentrated, extractive wines.

He is popular thanks to the easy language of his commentaries (in contrast to British colleagues) and a clear rating system based on a 100-point scale. To get 95 from Parker is the dream of every vintner. A high rating paves the way for high prices.

Haut Condissas Prestige. Haut-Medoc AOC, 1996
Rich purple/pomegranate colour. Lovely first nose reminiscent of wood. Upon shaking produces liquor-rice. The mouth: tannins and lots of wood. Super concentrated wine, but without fat. Dehydrates the mouth.

Pingus. Ribera del Duero DO, 1997
Rich purple/pomegranate colour. Deep aroma. Lovely woody notes, but more wood than grapes. The tannins are dissolved and creamy. Very powerful. Not enough breed. Very concentrated. Output about 450 cases a year.

Chateau La Mondotte. Saint Emilion AOC, 1997
Deep garment colour with a sheen that is still magenta. Open aromas of black berries: blackcurrant, mulberry, cherry. It is warm, with a healthy oily texture, solid structure, and a lingering taste, particularly when taking into account the vintage. Overwhelming tannins and sound body.

Chateau Lynsolence. Saint Emilion Grand Cru AOC, 2001
Wine consisting of one hundred percent of merlot grown on 2 ha. It may be classified as a garage wine. The estate is producing just its second yield and is set to become a new super star of microcuvee at a (as yet) reasonable price. Silky, wide, rounded, thin, elegant. Thumbs up, Mr. Denis Barreau!

The most famous French producers of garage wines. A majority of them are from Bordeaux, most come from the left bank

Cigar Clan 2'2005 vol. 1. Dmitry Zhurkin