Last year we celebrated Fernande Blois’s 50 years of brokerage. But we forget that she had started 14 years earlier, at her father’s death, in the winegrowing trade. She thus represents a precious parcel of the Médoc’s memory.
You were 10 at the start of the 1914 war. Do you have any memories of those years when women had to make the wine?
Indeed, during the First War, the properties were run entirely by women. It was necessary, because if a vine is not worked it is lost. Back-pack spraying was by far the hardest job. Pruning was much less hard than nowadays and at the time it was not, as it is now, a task reserved for men. Indeed, Guyot pruning did not yet exist. They left 2 to 3 bendable canes per arm instead of the one used today. Besides, the vines were less vigorous. A snip of the secateurs was therefore within the reach of women. They ran the vineyard very well, since the years 1914, 1916 and 1918 have remained in the Médoc’s memory as great vintages.
In 1920, you were 16, your father died and you took over the property. How did that 1920 harvest go?
My father had felt himself dying for three years. Each time I came back from Bordeaux, where I was a boarder, he trained me to replace him. Notably, he taught me to taste. It was he who taught me everything that would make up my life later on. So I approached that 1920 harvest with a certain preparation, but I trembled every day. I was gripped by an awful fear of doing it wrong which pursued me everywhere. It was a dreadful situation. In spite of everything, I was rewarded because 1920 was a good vintage and at the time wine sold well. The 1920s were a happy decade at Pontoise-Cabarrus, my property. We had many great vintages such as 1920, 1924, 1926, 1928 and 1929. Besides, I would draw a parallel between 1982 and 1929. At present, superlatives are greatly abused: people speak of exceptional years every 4 or 5 years. For my part, since I have worked in wine, I have known only 2 vintages that I would call exceptional: 1929 and 1982.
How were the winemaking and the sale of a mediocre vintage like 1925 handled?
That year we no longer knew where to put the wine, there was so much of it. We made a wretched wine with no colour, no tannins, nothing. I would even go so far as to call it plonk. Yes, real plonk! Prices collapsed. There was then an atmosphere of panic on the market. Everybody wanted to sell at any price. Then, fortunately, the fine 1926 harvest allowed a return to honourable prices.
Can the bad pre-war vintages be compared with what are now called small vintages (like 1980)?
There is nothing comparable. We must tip our hats to the oenologists. Thanks to them, we no longer see wine like the 1925. You cannot imagine nowadays what those wines could be like. Currently, in a small year, the wines are sometimes light in colour or tannin but they are good. We had, for example, no means of acting on temperatures. Besides, we did not even think about it. Except in years when the wine got too hot, like 1945. That year, the wine weighed 14.4° at my place. We had to try to cool it with makeshift means. Don’t go imagining that the wines of the past were stronger than those of today. On the contrary. Most of the time, the wines were around 10° or less. To come back to the small vintages, they often came from cold harvests. They were left to ferment at low temperature: the tannins and colour were not extracted from the skins.
The 1930s brought desolation and misery to the Médoc. How did you live through that?
It was awful. I was lucky, however, to be able to take over a brokerage firm in 1934. It is a wonderful trade that pulled me out of misery and allowed me to keep Pontoise-Cabarrus until 1959. Indeed, the economic crisis made prices collapse. Most crus pulled up their vines, classified growths like the others. I loved wine too much to pull up as well. But everything I earned in brokerage went into it. My neighbours who trusted me came to beg me to sell at any price to redo a roof or buy back a horse. It was total misery and a real heartbreak for me. At that time, the Crédit Agricole barely existed and small owners did not dare go to it.
What price difference was there then between Médocs and table wines?
None, and even worse. I remember buying some 25 years ago (because the crisis there lasted until the 1970s) at the Bégadan cellar, then run by Monsieur Lucas, hybrids at 20 francs more than Médocs. I think it was 400 francs per tonneau of hybrid against 380 for that of Médoc.
How can that be? What did hybrids have that Médocs did not?
They were so-called teinturier hybrids. They were bought for their colour. Besides, there were hybrids of one, two, three colours, and so on up to six colours.
How did this colour scale work?
You took a measure of water and doses of wine. If one dose of hybrid had to be put in the water for it to take on the colour of pure wine, the hybrid was called “1 colour”. If it needed two doses, the hybrid was a “2 colours”, and so on. Besides, I sometimes used these wines as ink in my pens.
How were wines worked in the past?
They were destemmed as today. They were left to macerate for a very long time. It was out of the question to rack before All Saints’ Day. It was a tradition. The wine therefore often stayed 1 month or 1 and a half months in the vat. It had to be softened by working it longer in barrels. It was left there on average for three years. The wines were fined twice during this ageing.
In the past, malolactic fermentation was unknown. Did you see wines undergo it in the bottle?
It happened and it was of course a catastrophe. The corks popped and people spoke of a second fermentation but knew nothing about the phenomenon. But as the wine spent three winters in barrel, most often it took place during ageing without anyone noticing.
Some think we will never again make wines as good as in the past. What do you think, you who made these old wines?
In the past there were very good wines of course, but they were rare. Whereas at present one finds many excellent ones. Indeed, small owners did not know how to vinify. It was not unusual to see wine kept in half-full vats. At that time, label tastings did not exist. It was enough to produce within the appellation area to have the appellation. So, to avoid nasty surprises, négociants often bought at racking. The owner racked directly into the tanker.
Enormous progress has been made since that time. And it continues. At the beginning of the labels, we often happened to taste bad wines. Now they have disappeared. We must thank the oenologists first and foremost.
