Who are you? What are your backgrounds?
Stéphanie Marchand : I am a professor of oenology at the University of Bordeaux, based at the ISVV since 2008. I have been interested in wine since I was allowed to drink it, but coming from a farming background, I loved winegrowers before I loved wine. I admit that at first I imagined myself as a chemist with an incidental interest in wine. Yet the opposite happened. In 1998, I met Professor Gilles de Revel, who guided my whole career. 27 years ago, he entrusted me with a magnificent subject of experimentation: the question of ageing bouquet and the keeping potential of wines. I applied this question mainly to red wines but also to Champagne wines. Bordeaux and Champagne are fascinating objects of study. First because they are delicious! But also because they are diametrically opposed in terms of pH, composition, etc. Now I am looking at ways of securing this ageing potential, which is a bit of a foundation in Bordeaux and in Champagne, through understanding practices and preserving terroirs. That is my main field of research and my expertise. Beside that, I like tasting wines and above all exchanging with people in the trade. This last point is linked to my work as a teacher. If I have worked little on Bordeaux whites — not for lack of interest but rather for lack of opportunity — I would be interested in debating them with Julien, drawing on hypotheses from work in other wine regions and on my Champagne experience.
Julien Belle : I have been a consultant for a few years already. In fact, I am on my 26th vintage, 23 of them as an adviser and consultant, half as an employee and the other half on my own account. It was logical for me to become an independent consultant to support estates in their decision-making and in their more or less bold choices. What fundamentally changes is that before, when a winegrower suffered frost, I sympathised; today I am genuinely affected. I started out in multi-colour appellations, from red to white by way of sweet. That is what shaped me and forever marked the oenologist I am today. Moreover, when I joined Œnoteam in Saint-Émilion, it was also to add a string to my partners’ bow. We were right, given the craze for white and the discussions around creating new white AOCs in the Médoc, at Castillon or at Saint-Émilion. This career marked by whites has also convinced a few winegrowers I support, who produced only red, to make white. I believe that my profile as a “white” maker corresponds to expectations also regarding the profiles of reds. Of course, my expertise is not limited to dry whites; it also extends to sweet wines, macerated whites and blancs de noirs. Bordeaux’s strength is linked to this diversity of colours and profiles. After all, Bordeaux has not always been a land of red, far from it.
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You who taste a great deal, what character sketch would you give of Bordeaux whites?
SM : Unfortunately, among the affordable white wines, many are very marked by saline, simple, vegetal characters. That gives wines stuck between oysters and fish, whereas Sauvignon Blanc is a fine grape variety capable of much more complexity and of accompanying an entire meal. For my part, I favour more opulent, ripe and complex whites with several aromatic identities that reveal themselves as you taste. I look for structure and I certainly don’t want to drink water when I drink wine. Sauvignon must be ripe, with a crafted structure. It is a point on which Julien and I are in total agreement and that is why I like the wines he makes. Perhaps also because I have tasted a lot with him. That said, when I go to Champagne, I also select structured, mouth-coating wines with long ageing on lees. Be that as it may, in my view there is a real place for this type of white in Bordeaux. It is still necessary to take the trouble and work them with care and precision.
Coming back to the question of the consumer and what they expect,
isn’t there a misunderstanding? Do people expect opulent whites from Bordeaux?
SM : I am not a specialist on the question of consumers, but it is possible! I am also convinced that gastronomic white wines are mistreated in Bordeaux: drunk at the corner of a table, they often don’t even have the chance to meet a creamed chicken or a cheese. Bordeaux white wines have their full place in a meal and not just at aperitif time! What is certain is that wine consumption tends to fall and that 75 cl bottles are the norm. In this context, let’s make sure the wine chosen to accompany the whole meal is one of ours! The idea of reducing bottle volume could also be explored more widely, but that is another debate.
JB : I would add that, overall, the moments reserved for the different wines in Bordeaux, notably during meals, are often locked down! Here, it is hard to break with habits and traditions, which prevents wines, and whites in particular, from being reinterpreted. We don’t dare move the lines.
SM : Coming back to the style of Bordeaux whites, for a long time people tried to do more with Sauvignon in particular: ever more thiolic, ever more varietal, to end up, in the end, with a rather one-note style. Gilles de Revel often reminds me that “the best is the enemy of the good”, and that applies perfectly to this interpretation of Sauvignon! The advantage is that it is now easy to define the “typicity” of these wines and that there is a real identity. But, at the same time, the wines must be a current interpretation of this identity.
JB : The flip side of this underlying trend around Sauvignon Blanc is that it has generated Sauvignon bashing, pushing quite a few of us to condemn it! We must be careful not to denigrate the variety but its interpretation! Rather than seeking our fortune elsewhere with other varieties, or breaking free from Sauvignon, it seems to me we need to protect a variety that has proved itself in the past. Look at what Touraine is doing: it is not ready to abandon it, quite the contrary, it reinterprets it at will, as Sancerre does too. The signature wine, which I strongly promote, remains a wine of civilisation, of geography, of territory, and it seems to me that Bordeaux would be making a mistake in turning its back on this variety, all the more so as visitors don’t come looking for Chenin in Bordeaux. Just like Sémillon, Sauvignon can be picked at a different time.
SM: You are right to mention this variety! We too often forget that we have other very fine varieties in Bordeaux, with Sémillon, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle.
On that note, what do you think of this sudden craze for Sémillon?
JB : It is coming back into fashion, but there are two schools. On one side, there are the adepts of old-style winemaking, seeking mass and richness. In this case we are talking about winegrowers who make whites as they would make reds and who take this path to diversify. If I schematise to an outrageous degree, I would say they want to make a Burgundy, with lees management and a pursuit of opulence. At the same time, these winegrowers seek to make whites for keeping, but they are on the wrong track insofar as — and I insist — ageing capacity comes not from power but from the notion of freshness and acidity. To put it simply, a bodybuilt Sémillon will wilt as it ages. On the other side are those who aim to reinterpret it, use it like a Chenin and seek its aromatic essence by harvesting it a little earlier. I don’t regard it as a complement intended solely to counter the ostentatious markers of Sauvignon.
More broadly, why is white becoming fashionable again?
SM : I would say it is coming back because it is fundamentally more accessible. Young people often discover the wine world through white wine, wherever they are! The Loire Valley regions have contributed greatly to this return to favour, with fine wines that had their full place at the table, with a strong backbone.
Isn’t it also due to lower alcohol levels and the absence of tannins?
JB : Yes, there are more whites with reasonable alcohol levels. It is true that tannin — which I myself took time to interpret — can keep the consumer at a distance by blurring, for example, the perception of terroir, soils, grape varieties or winemaking. If I present a wine by saying “This is a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Merlot from clay-limestone”, I find that a consumer focused on the tannins misses my message. This problem arises less with whites.
SM : Yes, it’s like chocolate; when it’s milk, it’s for children and when it’s dark, it’s for adults (laughs). They are in fact the same families of molecules, polyphenols. There is also a technical or chemical reason for this craze for whites, in that for a long time we had to fight premature oxidation of whites. But as we progress on this subject, we realise there is less and less of it. Here it is the work of my fellow researchers that I must salute. Today, the question of “premox” has largely receded.
JB : All the more true because when I go to a restaurant whose wine list I don’t know, I prefer to venture towards a white. I will go wrong less and take fewer risks. There will be no phenol problem, for example.
SM : All the more so as in a restaurant at lunchtime I often take only one glass and I don’t want to get it wrong! I would complete what Julien says by mentioning the many technical advances made on whites: press management, protection against oxygen, progress in closures. Advances that have made them more appreciated by the general public.
JB : These advances have led major Bordeaux owners to launch into whites to demonstrate their know-how, their technical skill and their fine interpretation of terroir. To provoke a little, I would even say that it is easier to make red than to make white. Red has this robustness — protective tannins — that often lets you correct course. The room for manoeuvre is smaller for whites, and the stages not to be neglected more numerous, with harvest management, picking date, press and lees.
SM: Whereas for sweet wines everything is built in the berry, for the other whites everything is decided in the vineyard and at the press. Winemaking merely lifts a veil, but in reality the dice are cast well before it begins. In Champagne, the champagnisation reveals the wine and the blend, but there too everything is done blind. It takes all the talent and the projection ability of the cellar masters to make the right choices.
I would like to come back to wines at the table and to this Bordeaux white that is less associated with gastronomy. Isn’t pairing it with food again a way of rehabilitating it?
SM : It is one of the keys. I am a great cheese lover and I always have a platter of several cheeses at home (and an excellent cheesemonger!). I would need several wines to accompany them well: one for the aged Comté, one for the goat’s cheese and another for the Roquefort. All these wines must have enough complexity and density to support the lactic dimension of the cheeses or of a Bresse poularde in cream. In addition, to allow this return to the table, I campaign for these wines to be offered in small formats – 50 cl or 37 cl – to avoid wasting a bottle that could oxidise within a few days and to have no scruples about opening several.
JB : I would add that the Bordeaux consumer does not have the reflex of keeping their white in the cellar, unlike a Burgundy cut out for this keeping. Yet I believe we can make more dressed-up whites while preserving a certain freshness. We must, however, be careful not to imitate the Burgundians: we will never make Saint-Aubin with our ampelographic heritage. To think that Sémillon could suddenly become our Chardonnay would be a mistake.
Can we, on the other hand, copy the Loire?
JB : There is a form of kinship with Anjou wines, for example. Our Sémillon has some resemblance, all things considered, to their Chenin, not to mention the Sauvignon Blanc found in Sancerre or Chenonceau. We need to borrow from them the notion of signature wines, which is lacking in Bordeaux today: developing clos, rethinking yields, ageing the juices in vessels no larger than 20 hl, if only for managing lees, oxidation-reduction and so on, and in order in fine to preserve freshness, I keep coming back to it!
SM : As in Champagne, where lees work is favoured by suitable vessels. Rich in amino acids, these lees are incredible aroma precursors. All this requires time and work, otherwise the extraction of the lees will not be done properly.
As for Bordeaux white wines, should we start again from a blank page despite a few isolated experiments aimed, for example, at getting Sauvignon Blanc out of its box?
SM : Clearly not! Bordeaux has a magnificent history with white wines. Fine work was done by my predecessors at the ISVV to eradicate faults and define the identity of the whites. I campaign for us to add a storey to the house, not for a tabula rasa!
What is this extra storey?
SM : I have a particular sensitivity for old, even very old, wines. So I immediately think of working on the ageing potential of white wines to give them time to reveal themselves, for example by working on the lees.
I would like to broach with you the question of non-vintage wines, one of your hobby-horses.
JB : I think we need to integrate a bit of R&D and boldness, which would go all the more in the direction of the AOPs and the defence of territorial signatures. I do believe that the notion of solera or non-vintage wine could meet some expectations for whites or reds. It is above all a solution that would allow greater transparency towards the consumer. For example, to add acidity to a vintage, we could go and fetch another, more acidic vintage without adding snake oil! The winegrower could thus reduce production costs and in fine the prices of the wines. By doing it this way, the notion of terroir is kept, since the different vintages going into the wine come from the same plot, the same clos. It is one of the technical-commercial solutions of tomorrow for the Bordeaux industry.
SM : I would add that it is one of Champagne’s assets. Reserve wines, which are compulsory in the blend, smooth out vintage effects, bring complexity and build an identity. This solution was also introduced to counter the vagaries of climate. And today we have a worrying recurrence of “difficult” vintages. Furthermore, as a side note, reserve-wine blends are often delicious and have their full place at the heart of a meal.
JB : We are digressing a little, but this attachment to the vintage in Bordeaux results from a demand from critics and professionals. It seems to me that today the consumer buys a cru first before buying a vintage.
SM : I agree with you there: a study showed that place matters more in a wine’s identity than its interpretation through the vintage. The vintage remains a modulating effect of the terroir. Which is allowed by the winemaker who accompanies it and is by no means at the front of the stage.
Do whites offer more organoleptic possibilities?
SM : What is certain is that white wines in Bordeaux, as elsewhere, offer an incredible aromatic palette and range of sensations. In the past, out of concern for protection against oxidation, some white wines were for a long time marked by an excess of SO2. The smell of this antioxidant masked the aromas of the grape and in the end opened up a gap between the identity of the wines and their perception by the public. Technical advances have allowed winemakers to rationalise and reduce the use of SO2.
JB: At first, bioprotection applied to red allowed the use of SO2 in whites to be limited. In under 10 years, total SO2 doses have fallen in Bordeaux. And then I would remind you that with Sauvignons, it is easier to move away from thiol and open up new possibilities for it, all the more so with the new climatic conditions.
We have talked a lot about Sauvignon Blanc, but are there other white grape varieties that come into play, in your view?
JB : If tomorrow we had to bring a new variety into the Bordeaux specifications for its robustness and its adaptation to climate change, I would bet on Gros Manseng rather than on Colombard or Ugni Blanc.
Would you say that white varieties have more assets to offer in adapting to climate change?
JB : Our varieties remain broadly suitable. We will just have to shake up a few habits and customs, be ready to harvest earlier in hot years and not be afraid of picking on 10 August to obtain great whites. It will be more of a human problem, especially as for the winegrower the harvest window will be greatly extended. Hence, in my opinion, the temptation of blancs de noirs, these trompe-l’œil whites that show significant organoleptic similarities with classic whites.
Are fewer inputs generally used for whites?
JB : If we start at the right moment, for reds and whites alike, we don’t need inputs! Planting density, soil management and cover crops are paramount upstream. If we are there for every stage, in white as in red or sweet wine, we don’t need to intervene; we just have to accompany. The input often comes to correct bad timing.
My turn to ask you a question, Henry: how do you read white in Bordeaux?
HC : I have the impression that today white wines feed my curiosity more readily. They open up wider horizons of exploration for me, even if, I must admit, I feel a certain frustration at not meeting more bold spirits in Bordeaux like Château Grand Verdus and its solera.
