L’Ecluse

A quick trip up to Paris Montparnasse by TGV from Libourne in order to meet Dominique Dhyser and Mario Dussurget at the Ecluse Carnot restaurant/wine bar.

I was invited to talk about their company, about my company, about previous work we had done together and about future ventures.

Good wines and good food during business meetings always tend to make the discussions more agreable and help to build up a good business relationship and more importantly trust. This is often how business is done in China…

Well, the Ecluse winebars should be sponsored by the CIVB. We always hear that Bordeaux wines aren’t available on Parisien tables and these establishments only offer Bordeaux wines with a selection of wine by the glass with easy pricing ; the price of the bottle divided by 7.5 for the 10cl glass.

Of course the wines served were ones that we knew well : Virginie de Valandraud blanc, La Dominique 2007. On the wine list are also Château  Fleur Cardinale, Domaine des Sabines, Bellevue de Tayac, Bel Air Ouÿ, and Compassant…

Thank you from us.

Restaurants

A priority area for our company at the moment is wines in restaurants, for both the publicity and the image that we gain but also for turnover. 

Already a lot of work has been done in this sector in Saint Emilion. Of course one might say that there are a few restaurants in the medival town and in the local area ! This offers a large choice of places, ambiences, different foods and different prices.

Of course there are the restaurants that can’t be missed like Plaisance with it’s 2 stars, the Envers du Décor or La Cadène. There are also the restaurants which have marked my past : Le Clocher, Le Clos du Roy and most of all Le Tertre where my Saint Emilion story began !

Although nowadays I prefer to eat at home with Murielle who, unfortunately for her, often has to do the cooking.

Among the restaurants which honour me by purchasing my wines are the Michelin Stars of Paris but restaurants from all over the world, Toyko, New York and Moscow are important to the success of our company, of our wines. We also welcome bistrots !  

Harvest time

Now is not he time to wait for perfection. With this current hot and wet weather, we are doing our best to collect high quality grapes in spite of some botrytis starting here and there. If this rot is noble and welcome in Sauternes, in Saint Emilion we are rushing to win the race against it.
Of course all the work done in the vineyard during the summer (green harvest, deleafing....) means that our grapes are not too close to one another and that  the sun and wind when present, can be the best cure to allow our grapes to be rather great.

Those last few days have worked the tannins just fine. Our harvest team works18 rows at once, all in all we currently employ 60 workers in our vineyard everyday.

As far as performance improvement goes (thank you new Saint Emilion classification !) we have bought a second  grapes sorting machine, which was most needed even if the budget reaches 100 000 euro...

And the harvest goes on...

The harvest of our white sauvignons will end tomorrow, and we may start the harvest of one single plot of young merlot (4 years old) which has suffered from the draught.
The other merlots will wait as long as the current weather remains stable.

Jane Anson has realized one of the first tastings organized with a bunch of the newly classified Saint Emilions. Valandraud 2009 won the race and was awarded with great comments and ratings (94-95-Highly recommended to Outsanding). Some of our neighbours and members of our informal club of Saint Etienne de Lisse based properties did well too : Peby Faugères  (92), Faugères (91), Pressac (90), and Sansonnet (90).
Jane is a regular writer for Decanter, Jancis Robinson and this article was more specifically created for the South China Morning Post