Long and Winding Road: Ausone 1912–1999

BY NEAL MARTIN | MARCH 6, 2018

"One hopes shortly to find Ausone again at the top." Edmund Penning-Rowsell, The Wines of Bordeaux, 1969

Name a Bordeaux château as enchanting as Ausone. It’s eye-candy perched on the fringe of Saint-Émilion, a picture postcard lookout post guarding a medieval village. The daring vertiginous slither of tarmac that sharply twists round into the gravel courtyard shaded by chestnut trees, the bewitching vista towards the Dordogne and beyond, the pulchritude of the ornate 19th century château buildings, the fairytale entrance into the barrel cellar with time-gnarled vines looming over your head, the historic legacy of the name and the reverence conferred upon its present owners, the Vauthiers. They all combine to ensure Ausone is upheld as one of the most eminent and in some ways, enigmatic Right Bank estates. Of course, there are also the dogs, Cork and Gucci. Can’t forget them. They bound over from the offices in a flash of diaphanous grey towards my car as soon as they smell Englishman for lunch, a friendly slobbering lick to check if I need seasoning and then there is the occasional illicit poop in the flowerbeds. They are part of Ausone as much as Pauline and Alain Vauthier themselves (without the slobbering licks.)

Present proprietor Alain Vauthier. Photo courtesy of Johan Berglund.

I wish to emphasise that this is a historical examination of Ausone. It focuses upon what has been instead of what is or will be. Considering the time frame of the vintages in question, it concerns more the Dubois-Challon family than the Vauthiers. I did consider augmenting recent vintages that I hope to taste later this year however, upon perusing my notes, I found a pertinent message by stopping the clock at 1999, the most recent vintage in an extraordinary vertical tasting that I participated in earlier this year. The tasting was organized (yet again) by Jordi Oriols-Gil, who meticulously sourced the bottles over many months to ensure that they showed as well as possible. Old bottles of Ausone are rare birds. The château bins run dry as recently as the early 2000s. As an aside, I am reliably informed that the cache of old Ausone wines back to the 19th century reside at its “estranged sibling” Château Belair, now owned by the Moueix family. Let’s hope Edouard Moueix or his father, Christian, can resist temptation.

History 

First, we must refresh our minds with history, because it is germane to the wines under discussion. As has been written countless times, the name Ausone originates from the Roman poet Ausonius, who was born in Bordeaux in 310AD. Though, records indicate that he tended vines in the area of Saint-Émilion, then known as Lucaniacus, there is no evidence that they were located precisely where Ausone lies today. Archaeological remains of a Gallo-Roman villa were uncovered in 1843 on the lower reaches of their vineyard, and later two mosaic floors near that stream close to La Gaffelière just below Ausone. We can speculate to whom they belonged. Was it just propinquity between the present location of Ausone and the Roman villa or the exact site? My own gut feeling is that there were two villas, but the facts are probably lost under the sands, or literally, clay soils, of time.

Fast-forward a few centuries. The estate was acquired by the Cantenat family in 1718. Bernard Ginestet explained how the site was known as “La Madeleine” and that it was the only Saint-Émilion “Château” that predates the Second Empire insofar that it referred to the dwelling, built by cooper and winemaker Jean Cantenet in 1781 before passing into the hands of the Lafargue family. The wine itself was labelled “Cantenat à La Madeleine”. Cocks & Feret rated Ausone highly in their guides; its reputation enhanced by surviving relatively unscathed after oïdium, phylloxera and mildew, the triple whammy that poleaxed many Saint-Émilion estates during the latter half of the 19th century. In the first edition of 1850, Ausone is ranked 11th, then 4th in the 1868 edition behind Canon, Belair and Troplong Mondot, and finally from the turn of the century, numero uno. Although I have not tasted any myself, the wines from this period are lionized by the likes of David Peppercorn. 

In 1891 the château passed to Edouard Dubois, the husband of Mme. Lafargue’s niece, former manager of the vineyard for a number of years. Together they purchased Belair in 1916 and the two estates were consanguineous throughout much of the century. Alas, Edouard died in 1921, whereupon his widow and his two children, Jean and Cécile continued to run Ausone. During the 1920s Ausone became one of the few Saint-Émilion wines to gain traction in the all-important British market, then dominated by the Left Bank châteaux. In his “Book of French Wines”, P. Morten Shand described Ausone as “...among the very longest to be grown wholly from old ungrafted French vines”. Given that Shand penned his book in 1928, I wonder when exactly the entire vineyard was actually re-grafted onto phylloxera-resistant rootstock? 

In the 1950s, Ausone was classified as a Saint-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé “A” alongside Cheval Blanc, although the château itself was enduring a difficult period. In 1958 Jean had married Héylette, a much younger woman and by all accounts prone to the grandiloquence of Mme. Loubat at Pétrus. Alas, her husband began to suffer long periods of illness. The régisseur, Mon. Chaudet, was in his eighties and fact is you need a lot of energy and chutzpah to run a winery. No vines were replanted in the vineyard between 1950 and 1976. The wines purportedly underwent a short 10- to 15-day cuvaison, sometimes spending excessively long periods in oak in a rather unclean cellar. Jean passed away in 1974 without any children. Therefore, ownership passed to his widow Héylette and Cécile’s family. Cécile had married into the Vauthiers and together had a son, Marcel who himself had four children, including Alain Vauthier, born in 1950. In the 1970s, the indefatigable Héylette took the reins and in 1975 hired 20-year old Pascal Delbeck, a distant relative who had just completed his viticultural studies. The old oenologues soon retired and a new maître-de-chai, Mon. Lanau was appointed in 1978. A year later they replaced four of the wooden vats and began the slow process of modernizing the out-dated chai.