Chateau Rauzan Selga
(first published Decanter magazine, July 2009)
The method used for drawing up the 1855 Classification of Bordeaux wines was intended to be irreproachable. No jury tastings that could be accused of partiality. No chateau visits to decide on the quality of the installations. Instead, hard-headed commerce – a simple look at the average price reached by Medoc properties in the market place over the proceeding century. At the time, Chateau Mouton Rothschild was placed at the top of the second growths, with Chateau Rauzan Segla right behind it – a 19th century equivalent of a Super Second.
When Mouton was moved up to first growth in 1973, Rauzan Segla took its place as the top of the second growths, so theoretically the leading wine in the Medoc after the first five. But the 120 years between the initial assessment and this reworking had seen mixed fortunes for the Margaux estate. For a start, in 1973 grapes were still being trodden by foot after harvest, and the bottling line was outside the cellar, meaning temperature variations that could adversely affect the wine. Over the years, owners and managers such as the French Cruse family, Liverpudlian John Holt and negociant house Eschenauer (who didn’t survive for long after the 1973 oil crisis) had made a few improvements to the cellars and vineyards, but through large parts of the 20th century, Rauzan Segla rarely lived up to its ranking.
Today, whether you judge by points, price or column inches, it is easily one of the most vibrant properties in Margaux, receiving increasing plaudits from the critics in the UK, and especially in the US and Japan. A few key improvements can be dated back to the Eschenauer days – namely the replanting of high yielding rootstocks with better quality, lower yielding plants. But it was still swimming under the radar – and as such proved the perfect investment for the Wertheimer brothers of the iconic luxury Chanel couture house. At the time, in the rainy summer of 1993, they were still smarting at missing out on the chance to buy Chateau Latour (to the perhaps tougher bargaining style of Francois Pinault), and the opportunity to restore the faded glory of Rauzan Segla was the perfect salve. A few years later, they invested in a similarly faded star of Saint Emilion, Chateau Canon.
The Werthimer’s did manage to get one thing out of their brief flirtation with Latour, however – namely its Scottish director, John Kolasa, who was wooed away from the Pauillac first growth to head up the new team in Margaux, along with his Latour colleague David Orr. ‘When we arrived in 1994,’ recalls Kolasa, ‘we had everything to do. It was a total mess; there were no computers, no records system to speak of, and everything was harvested by machine. When the grapes were picked, the cellar was full of tanks all at 220 hectolitres, meaning you were effectively blending immediately because everything had to be chucked in together.’
While at Latour, Kolasa had built up the negociant business Ulysses Cazabonne – and when Pinault accepted his resignation, he suggested that Kolasa take the negociant company with him (‘you built it up, you should take it’). Because of that, he was able to leave with six of his colleagues – and the Wertheimers sent a financial director from Chanel to get some order into the books.
In 1994, Bordeaux had another mixed summer, and it was hardly the most auspicious of starts. But Kolasa introduced the idea of sorting tables on trucks in the vineyard – a technique he was bringing in from Latour. And immediately after the first harvest, the new owners started laying a major drainage system, with the joint investment of Chateau Margaux and the local town hall.
In January 1995, the brothers hired vineyard architect Bernard Mazieres (also responsible for Yquem and Mouton Rothschild) to begin work on the vat room, and in the same year, they introduced a second wine, Segla. A year later they moved on to the main house, hiring cult American interior designer and architect Peter Marino to work from the original 18th century drawings of the chateau and entirely renovate both inside and out.
Marino has done the iconic Chanel building in Tokyo (where Alain Ducasse’s Beige restaurant is found – and a vertical of both Rauzan Segla and Chateau Canon is available on the wine list), Armani’s private residence, and the Dior boutique in New York. But there is nothing overtly flashy about this refined corner of Margaux. Instead, flagstones in the entrance hall have been sourced from an 12th century English church (they bought the ruin purely to pull up the floor), and the drawing rooms are full of deep velvet drapes and impeccably-upholstered armchairs, set in front of brass-fronted fireplaces that are almost always twinkling away with a real fire. The whole interior seems permanently set for an Architectural Digest shoot; perhaps because no one actually lives in the chateau full time.
Work is still continuing. The underground cellar was started in 2002, finished in 2004. For now it’s just holding empty bottles, because a fault with the design meant it flooded and still needs to be fully dried out. They hope to be using it by 2012.
But the most intensive restoration has gone on in the vineyard. There are 38 full time staff at Rauzan Segla, and over half of these work in the vines. All new plantings are done at 10,000 vines per hectare, and this high density currently covers around 50% of the total, with 6,600 being the lowest density. And in January 2008, they bought 8 hectares from Chateau de La Bourgade that were already planted at 10,000 vines per hectare but in need of a lot of work. This will be vinified with the rest of their vines, bringing the total to 60 hectares.
‘One of our big advantages is that we have the budget to pay for truly careful work,’ says Kolasa. ‘In 2007 and 2008, for example, we could employ people to react to weather conditions when it was necessary – so if treatments needed to be undertaken over the weekend, that was what we did. Most chateaux will not employ people for weekend vineyard work, because it is so much more expensive than during their usual ’35 hours’ – so if there is bad weather, they wait until Monday for spraying’. The chef de culture at Rauzan Segla, in contrast, took no holidays in either 2007 or 2008.
This approach is not necessarily judged with the same enthusiasm by everybody. Simon Staples at Berry Bros spoke frankly. ‘We haven’t bought Rauzan Segla since 1999. It’s always around 25% more than it should be, and it’s always released way too late in the campaign. We buy it sometimes, but only on request. It is of course a very good wine, but wrongly priced...’. There are concerns also that the boutique vineyard practises brought in by Kolasa from high density planting to meticulous leaf thinning and green harvesting, to increased use of new oak barrels (60% in an average year), have meant the wine has to kept very highly priced, because it is becoming increasingly expensive to produce.
Others would disagree. In the recent Liv-ex reworking of the 1855 classification – based on price, as with the original – Rauzan Segla moved down to a third growth, suggesting that they are not asking excessive prices compared to many of their neighbours.
The Wertheimer’s themselves would never comment on this debate. They told the New York Times in 2002, 'We're a very discreet family, we never talk,' They never reveal sales figures for any of their companies, which are all privately owned (although there are estimates that Chanel turns over US$2 billion in perfume and fashion sales annually.) But you can’t see the accounts, and there is no share price that you can watch plummet in the current climate. All of which frees them to invest for the long term. As Alain explained in the same interview, ‘We don't think about return. We are not buying to sell. We're buying to make it better.’
And Kolasa himself is proud of what they have achieved. ‘The simple fact is that if you do the right thing in the vineyard, you don’t need a lot of extra imagination in the cellar. The Wertheimers have always grown things for their perfumes, from vanilla pods to flowers, and are one of the biggest producers of organic essences in the world. It is natural to them that investing in terroir has its own reward, and that is a matter of will, philosophy and patience.’
‘We strongly believe in Bordeaux having wines that age, because no one else does this as well as we do. That’s why there is such admiration for Bordeaux world over – that our terroir here is able to produce wines that truly grow and develop with the passing years. We want our customers to celebrate this, talk about old vintages, compare which they prefer – we are very conscious of our heritage; a key lesson that I learnt at Latour. There is nothing more wonderful in my position than being able to go into the cellar and pick up a bottle that was made 50 years ago by one of my predecessors, and we want to ensure we are doing the same thing for future generations.’
RAUZAN SEGLA EXIT PRICE (recommended first tranche price from UK merchants to consumers, per bottle – in euros, so not taking into account exchange rates)
20% of Rauzan Segla goes through Ulysses Cazabonne, their own negociant company, and 80% goes through the Place, through around 60 negociants. They also keep some back each year for stocks.
2002 – € 29.4
2003 – € 35
2004 – € 29
2005 – € 58.1
2006 – € 44.9
2007 – € 39.6
YIELDS
2007 43 hl/h
2006 52 hl/h
2005 39 hl/h
2003 30 hl/h
2001 39 hl/h
The Chanel Brothers
The House of Chanel is one of the only remaining privately-owned luxury goods companies in France, and is famously secretive. It is jointly owned by the two Wertheimer brothers – Alain and Gerard – together with their step-brother Charles Heilbronn. All three are grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer, who held the majority stake in the company at its founding in 1924. Alain is chairman of the board and lives in New York (and according to Forbes is worth US$4.3 billion), while Gerard is director of the European arm and lives in Geneva. Charles lives in France, dividing his time between Paris and Normandy, where they have a stud farm. It is under Alain’s direction that the company has acquired brands such as Tanner Krolle leather goods and Holland & Holland gunsmith (both perhaps because of the brothers’ keen interest in both horse riding and hunting). He also brought designer Karl Largerfield to the brand from Chloe.