The Michelin Grapes: Four Questions to Henri Duboscq

Among the 62 Bordeaux estates awarded one to three Michelin Grapes, Château Haut-Marbuzet is the only distinguished Médoc cru not to belong to the 1855 classification. Henri Duboscq looks back on this recognition, the singular style of his wine and the particular resonance the Michelin grape takes on for this family property.

Château Haut-Marbuzet has just received a Michelin grape. What does this distinction mean to you?

I felt similar pride when Robert Parker placed me in his Top 20 of Bordeaux wines. But being among the “starred” (grape-ed) today fills me with even greater joy, so much does Michelin embody, all over the world, a certain idea of French excellence.

Haut-Marbuzet had long since attained this position with the public. Seeing it today reach this form of nobility gives me the same jubilant emotion that a commoner raised to the nobility by his sovereign might have felt!

Moreover, the 1855 classification comprises 88 châteaux whereas the Michelin Guide comprises only 62, which makes for a stricter selection of a more contemporary character.

Haut-Marbuzet is the only Médoc cru distinguished by Michelin that does not appear in the 1855 classification. You, who claim a very personal style and a certain dissidence towards established hierarchies, do you not see in this, paradoxically, a form of institutionalisation?

I see it rather as recognition of our independence! Haut-Marbuzet retains this singularity of being the surprise from elsewhere, the only Médoc cru rewarded without belonging to the 1855 classification. This grape was won without inheritance, by the sole complementarity of a great forgotten terroir on which men of will and fervour have worked for 50 years.

Michelin does not reward a vintage, but the identity of an estate and its consistency over time. Since Haut-Marbuzet’s modest beginnings in 1952, what has been decisive, in your view, in revealing the qualities of its terroir and building its reputation?

Haut-Marbuzet’s reputation and renown existed well before its recognition. With my father, we made the wine we loved, whose taste escaped tradition. It could seem “revolutionary”, but the public adored it! That was only possible thanks to the evidence of an exceptional terroir and modern winemaking, contrary to certain methods in which tannins ended up crushing the fruit. From the 1960s, Haut-Marbuzet was the first wine to be seductive in its youth through the brilliance of its fruit and the suavity of its flesh. This wine of immediate pleasure shook the pillars of the Bordeaux temple, surprised by what was then called an “unusual taste”.

By creating the grapes, Michelin brings the wine world closer to that of fine gastronomy. You have long maintained privileged relations with great chefs and their restaurants. Can this initiative, in your view, help give Bordeaux back its full place at the great international tables?

Starred restaurateurs know better than anyone what the efforts, talent and consistency needed to obtain the star represent. They know the value and the demands that a Michelin ranking entails. Many of them now favour on their wine lists those appearing in the Michelin ranking, associated with this recognition. I am convinced that the 62 lucky recipients of the grape already see sales influenced by this distinction.