Could you introduce yourself?
I am Anne Le Naour, executive director of CA Grands Crus Vignobles et Services. In that capacity, I handle the general management of all the properties owned by the group. That means three properties in Bordeaux: Château Grand-Puy Ducasse, Château Meyney and Clos Saint-Vincent, and one property in Burgundy, Château Philippe-le-Hardi. I joined the group in January 2010 as technical director, since I trained as an agronomist and oenologist. I previously held fairly similar roles, although a little broader than the position I came here for.
In May 2016, I was offered the post of deputy managing director and in May 2019, when my predecessor left, I took over the general management of the properties. I took over a number of technical matters from the ground up and supported the restructuring plan for all the vineyards, to move the wines upmarket. Having orchestrated that on the technical side, I greatly enjoyed this mission of being able to go a little further and tackle issues linked to sales and communication. When I arrived, I surrounded myself with a fairly young team who, quite legitimately, because it was made up of talented and high-performing people, wanted to progress. That allowed them to take on more responsibilities. We grew together.
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How do you distinguish the different entities?
Clos Saint-Vincent is a property where we make wines that stand apart from the production of the more upmarket Médoc châteaux. We craft easy-drinking wines there which, as such, are very well suited to today’s consumers, who are looking for less oaky, less tannic wines. The challenge is to succeed in that context with a little-known property and limited means. Then there are Grand-Puy Ducasse and Meyney, two properties that people often want to compare when there is no reason to do so. They have very different histories. One is classified, the other not. But Château Meyney has a history that predates that of a great many classified growths. It is a former priory, a property that really transported me when I set foot there for the first time. I should add that I passed in front of it almost every day without ever taking the time for a detour before joining the group. From the road, I observed this rather majestic site. I imagined that the buildings were limited to what was visible from the road… In fact, when you get up there, you realise the size of the building, of this architecture. I had no doubt about the potential of this terroir overlooking the estuary. It was obvious. For Grand-Puy-Ducasse, the love at first sight was less immediate, because this is a property that I did know and had been tasting for a very long time, since, like other properties I looked after, it was a member of the Union des Grands Crus Classés de Bordeaux. I had many opportunities to taste it both en primeur and as a released wine. I found then that it was a property whose wines were well made but often a little austere. As, in addition, the vines were not adjacent to the château, I did not imagine that the terroir potential of the site was so high in quality.
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What would you say about this vineyard?
This vineyard is not simple because it is extremely fragmented across the whole territory of the Pauillac appellation, but I quite quickly came to realise that there was very high potential. It must be admitted that it is not easy to read, as you cannot see the vines from the château. What is more, when I took over the reins, we had a winemaking facility made up almost exclusively of 250-hectolitre vats! I won’t spell it out for you: when you have 63 plots of vines on 14 types of soil with 2 grape varieties, the compromises for blending grapes that have nothing to do with each other are made at harvest because you have no other technical option. Which means that at that time we were often hiding part of the vintage’s quality potential. The vines were not a concern; a restructuring plan had already been launched, which we continued. The vineyard is in excellent condition. The restructuring is not quite complete, but the most ambitious part of the plan is behind us. We have revealed the terroir, in particular in vintages as far from obvious as 2023 and 2024, which are our first two vintages in the new vat room. We are making wines that are recognised among the best we have ever made. The new facility is now a revealer of the work that has been done in the vineyard over the last 15 years.
After the production facility, has the time come for hospitality?
We have also equipped ourselves with infrastructure that allows us to welcome the general public. For quite a long time now I have been convinced that there is a big gap in the way Bordeaux organises its sales. That gap is linked to the end consumer. If sales are intermediated, the wine producer does not know their end customer, because between the producer and the end consumer there is a négociant who sells to an importer, who in turn sells to distributors. As a result, in some countries we find ourselves completely removed from the market. In that case, the message that reaches the end consumer can be very far from the one we want to convey. I find that welcoming visitors at the property remains the best way to restore that link.
How was the on-site welcome envisaged?
All the buildings are interconnected, which is not very simple when you have production, visitor reception and private hospitality. This led to quite extensive thinking in order to achieve flows that can be modified at will according to the seasonality of our activities. We designed modular and very agile reception facilities. The cellar, for example, obviously cannot be visited in the same way during the harvest. We thought it through so that the visitor experience is never degraded. We also sought to address several types of audience: the general public, our customers and businesses (B2B) through our reception offer for seminars.
Could you look back at this necessary reconnection with the public, with the consumer?
I would say that, in fact, we are also in a world where the model that previously existed — I am speaking for properties like ours — needs to be reviewed. We have production volumes that are too large under a single label. So I think we need to think about a way of diversifying our production, in this case being able to offer, for example, wines aged in wood and others not, and to be able to work on distribution exclusivity principles.
Should the Place de Bordeaux be questioned?
The Place de Bordeaux system is ultra-efficient as long as demand is slightly higher than supply. If it is far higher, then it is downright regal. The problems appear as soon as we tip into the opposite balance… In that case, the négociant who wins the deal is, unfortunately, often the one who agrees to trim his margin! In a system where the volumes on offer exceed the volume demanded, well, it’s a race to the bottom, with whoever starts nibbling at his margin by offering a 5% discount, then 7%, and so on, reaching margin levels that are not sustainable or viable for the négociants who carried out the deals. And in doing so, we also create distrust of our brands.
And what do you make of the first price announcements?
I think it is more of an issue for the firsts or the super-seconds than for growths like ours, since we have already lowered the prices of our wines a lot. We can hardly do much more because there comes a point where we cannot go below our cost price. As far as en primeur is concerned today, nobody is fooled by the fact that most Bordeaux growths, if they are not bought en primeur, will be available as released wines. It is less speculative. The en primeur campaign is going to be difficult for everyone but particularly for the growths that sell through distribution. Beyond that, the release prices seem consistent to me, but again, if, in order to close the deal, some négociants offer significant discounts, the system will emerge even more fragile.
What about the Place de Bordeaux?
The Bordeaux négoce has skills, knowledge and know-how that the property does not have. It would be ridiculous to try to do without it. On the other hand, we may need to rethink how we operate in order to better protect the margins of our intermediaries (from the négociant to the final distributor) and be a little less open market in setting up “win-win” operations. There is a lot of talk about en primeur at the moment, but en primeur cannot be reformed just like that in a year. On the other hand, let us put a little more emphasis on the released-wine side.
How would you like to work with négociants?
Not by putting the 2019 back on the market with 30 négociants, but by agreeing with a very small pool to let them work more calmly by sharing out the distribution areas, without stepping on each other’s toes.
Coming back, as news obliges, to en primeur: are too many growths open to it?
The problem is that many have forgotten the reason for en primeur: to allow a consumer to buy a wine in advance for much less than if they bought it after bottling. It has to be said that this promise is not kept regularly enough. So yes, there are probably too many growths en primeur, but let us remember a vintage like 2010, for example, when all 450 châteaux taking part were sold, from the small Bordeaux that came out at 6 euros to the Premier Cru Classé at 600 euros, in a period, it is true, that was not the same in terms of purchasing power. It is often forgotten to say that all crises — not just Bordeaux ones, but all crises in the wine world — are linked to a fall in household purchasing power. We must indeed not lose sight of the fact that wine is not an essential product, and that at some point, if a household has to choose between feeding its children and buying the bottle of wine…
To conclude, could you tell me about your ideal Bordeaux?
In fact, for me, the ideal Bordeaux is the Bordeaux you drink with pleasure and that makes you want another glass. It is not the Bordeaux that could be made at a certain period, when you found very extracted, very oaky wines and overripeness was often advocated. Besides, it has been a long time since Bordeaux like that was produced! Bordeaux has this capacity, in particular thanks to the Cabernets, to produce wines that, even in very sunny vintages, can retain a certain freshness and, increasingly, be enjoyed in their youth as well as decades later, and on that last point Bordeaux has no equivalent, or very few!
