An
Education: La Dominique 1989-2015

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 9, 2019&nbsp; We all have a handful of bottles that
are cornerstones of our vinous education. They are not implicitly the best; instead,
these bottles enlighten our palates to the pleasures of a particular region or
producer. One of mine is the 1990 La Dominique, which was served at a dinner
during an early foray down to Bordeaux. It opened my senses to the joys of
Saint-Émilion, its intoxicating bouquet of plush red fruit and velvety palate thrown
into sharp relief by the preceding austere Left Bank Cabernets. I visited the
property on my next trip and enjoyed a guided tour with winemaker Axel Heinz
before he upped sticks to manage Ornellaia. All of this means that I have a
sentimental attachment to La Dominique, not unlike the fondness we feel for our
favorite schoolteacher or childhood chum. Unfortunately, over the years that followed,
I never found a bottle that replicated the thrill of that 1990. Too often I
found shortcomings: occasionally overripeness or sometimes perplexing greenness.
It was difficult to reconcile a wine that was close to my heart but often left
me crestfallen, like falling for the girl who can’t help letting you down.

Earlier this year, the Gwendeline Lucas General
Manager at La Dominique, asked if I would revisit the property for a vertical
tasting. Despite my recent tepid reviews, I wanted to investigate the reasons
for my dissatisfaction. Had I missed something?&nbsp;Or was it something they
were missing?&nbsp;I forewarned Lucas that I must be honest about my opinions,
and that I approach all tastings with an open mind, so their invitation might simply
validate my concerns. Nevertheless, she accepted my terms, and we arranged a
date.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1554831965159-la+dominique+winery+1_copy.jpg"> La Dominique winery

History

In the 17th century, the Glenne
family owned the estate known as Durieu. The original Belleyme maps of 1785
indicate that vines were planted in this location at a time when surrounding
land was used for cereal crops and pasture. In 1690 the property was renamed
Dominique by Jacques and Isabeau Micheau. In 1841 Le Producteur named the merchants Chaperon as the owners of La
Dominique, which is unsurprising given that during this period they also owned
L’Evangile, over the border in Pomerol. Henri Greloud added the definite
article “La” in the mid-19th century, purportedly because he adored the Caribbean
island of Dominica, or La Dominique in French. Greloud founded Château Lafleur
in Pomerol and, according to the 1868 edition of Féret, also owned La Closure
and Daugay. The Soualle family were proprietors for an interim period, and then
from 1933, the de Bailliencourt family presided over La Dominique as well as
Gazin. They sold part of Gazin to Pétrus in 1969 and at the same time parted
ways with La Dominique.

“La Dominique was purchased in 1969
by Clément Fayat,” Lucas told me before we commenced the tasting. At that time,
the estate was ostensibly just a manor home surrounded by a few vines, and
perhaps for that reason, along with the fact that Fayat was a very busy
industrialist, there was little investment at the property until he was encouraged
by other winemakers. I wanted to discover a little more about the Fayat family.

“Clément Fayat is from Corrèze,
from a family of six children. He left school when he was 15 and arrived in
Libourne as a young man. He was working on the construction of a bridge near
the town and saved enough money to buy a local company that specialized in
public works. This went quite well, and he kept buying companies. He has 150
companies now, and the group is based in 90 countries, with 20,000 employees.
His sons took over four years ago. Jean-Claude Fayat is now in charge of the
group, and I work with him. Clément Fayat still works and lives at Clément-Pichon.
There is another brother, Laurent Fayat, who is less involved in the business.
They are all very passionate about the wine and they want to work with someone
they trust.”<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1554817752490-la+dominique+jean-claude+and+gwendeline_copy.jpg">Gwendaline Lucas and&nbsp;Jean-Claude Fayat&nbsp;of&nbsp;La Dominique

I asked Lucas about her own journey
to La Dominique. “I was hired about 10 years ago. I come from Chablis, and I
studied in Dijon and then made wine at McClaren Vale with Steve Pannell and
also in Marlborough, New Zealand, before working for Jean-Marc Brocard. I
wanted to understand the Bordeaux system, so I started at [négociant] CVBG.
Then I met with Monsieur Fayat and decided to stay in Bordeaux. I’m now in
charge of running the château under
Fayat. The winemaker is Pierre Meylheuc, who has been here for 12 years. We
work with Michel Rolland, who we‘ve been collaborating with for four decades.”

Vineyard&nbsp;

The vineyard is located directly
east of Cheval Blanc, with Château Jean Faure on the other side. Its proximity
to Cheval Blanc is deceiving because the terroir is different. Only about
one-quarter of the vines are sited on gravel, while much of the rest grows on
sandy soils with siliceous limestone debris over clay subsoil.

“We have 29 hectares now,” Lucas
explained. “In 2010 we bought another 4-hectare vineyard, Vieux Fortin, which
is now blended with La Dominique. [Vieux Fortin lies south and southeast of the
main vineyard.] Until 2012 this was a second label, because it wasn’t
classified as a Grand Cru. There are 24 hectares in production, as we’re
currently changing the composition of the vineyard. It now consists of 85%
Merlot, 13% Cabernet Franc and 2% Cabernet Sauvignon, although I‘d like more
Cabernet Franc, and we’ve started to replant in order to have around 18%. [The
estate has its own nursery, so they can use massal selection for the new vines,
which is important since good Cabernet Franc rootstock is notoriously difficult
to find.] We have different soil types, the most important being the part clay
and limestone soils toward Pomerol.”

Lucas further elaborated, “We have&nbsp;five entirely organic hectares
toward the south of the vineyard – including the plots that were Vieux Fortin –
on an experimental basis. For the rest of the vineyard, we practice sustainable
viticulture, working our vines organically and using chemical treatments only
when necessary and only at flowering. We were qualified HVE3 in 2015 [high-quality
in terms of environmental practices] and step by step, we’re training the whole
vineyard organically all along the vegetative cycle when climatic conditions
allow it.”<a target="_blank" href="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1554821627887-image+%2820%29.png"><img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1554830627542-image+%2821%29.png"></a> The vineyards at La DominiqueThe Winery The winery was overhauled in 2012,
to a design by architect Jean Nouvel. To quote the estate themselves, it’s a very
modern, visually striking facility. Compared to the undulating curves of Cheval
Blanc, which blends in with the landscape, La Dominique is designed to stand
out with its iridescent, bold red metallic exterior, apparently in six shades
of red. The restaurant on the upper floor, La Terrasse Rouge, is a popular stop
during the en primeur week. Between
2007 and 2009, Jean-Luc Thunevin was hired as a consulting winemaker, although
the relationship with Michel Rolland stretches all the way back to 1977, which
in my mind would make La Dominique one of his first clients. 

The estate’s grapes go through
multiple stages of sorting. The first is by hand at picking, when the grapes
are transferred to the winery in 35kg crates. There is one sorting at reception
using a vibrating de-stemmer manned by two people checking the bunches, then a
sorting using a Tri-baie machine, and
a final sorting on a vibrating table manned by six people and a dozen beady
eyes. The vat room operates by gravity, the wine fermenting in 22
temperature-controlled 73-hectoliter vats in a truncated cone shape that allows
gentle extraction. The wine is then transferred into barrels sourced from five
or six cooperages, depending on the vintage, but mainly from Taransaud, Sylvain
and Baron, with less than 50% new oak and the remainder one year old. The
barrels include both traditional 225-liter and larger 400-liter barrels with
medium toasting. The total duration of élevage
is around 16 months. “We have a clay amphora and two polymer-lined concrete
eggs just for trial,” Lucas explained. “We’ll see how they perform. I want to
evolve in terms of oxygenation during barrel maturation, so we transferred some
lots from the same parcel into barrels, concrete eggs and amphora to compare the
results. Up to around 60% of the production goes into the Grand Vin, and the
remainder is bottled as the second label, Relais de la Dominique.” Previously,
the second label was called Saint-Paul de Dominique, although I recall Heinz
telling me that they once produced another cuvée called Château Saint-Domingue,
which I have never seen myself.

The Wines

This vertical of La Dominique was one
of my most enjoyable tastings of 2018, not necessarily in terms of the wines
themselves, but because of the exchange of views they prompted. It’s rare to
engage a general manager in candid discussion, verbally deconstructing and analyzing
the strengths and weaknesses of each wine, pulling no punches and remaining
objective. Every vintage teaches you something; it’s up to us whether we choose
to learn from it. Though in the end this tasting did confirm my prior opinion of La Dominique, I came away
understanding more about the property.

Before Lucas and I broached the
wines that spanned the period from 1989 to the present, I asked her what she seeks
in La Dominique. “I want the wine to be precise and elegant,” she answered. “I
want the soil to be expressed in the wine.”&nbsp;

But if you take a cursory glance at
my scores, it’s obvious that even allowing for the vagaries of growing season,
there is inconsistency – and moreover, inconsistency not necessarily correlating
to vintage reputation. This can be damaging because it causes consumers to lose
faith in a producer. It’s not that they expect every vintage to be superlative;
however, a substandard wine tarnishes a château’s image for longer than a
single season, particularly when disappointment coincides with a relatively
unproblematic vintage. For this very reason, the top Bordeaux properties have
prioritized consistency, so that nowadays only a really terrible growing season
seriously impacts the final wine. This is down to improved vineyard husbandry,
ruthless selection (through the use of optical sorting machines), the ability
to blend varieties (unlike Burgundy), and cleaner, more hygienic wineries.Which are the vintages that
besmirch this Saint-Émilion’s reputation? In the naughty corner are the 2008 and the vexing 2009 La Dominique, the latter bereft of
vivacity on the nose and, though the palate makes amends, simply not good
enough. The 2012 La Dominique could
have been better but lacks cohesion on the finish. Among the older vintages,
the 2002 La Dominique comes from a difficult
growing season but still lags behind its peers, coming across rustic and mean.
The 2003 La Dominique is only
slightly better. The 2006 is average
and forgettable and the 2007 simply
rather dour.<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1554819066053-la+dominique+bottle+line+up_copy.jpg"> 

There are positives. The 1989
and 1990 La Dominique have held up well,
so long as you don’t compare them with their next-door neighbors. The 1998 La Dominique has blossomed into a
lovely Right Bank, while both the 2000
and the 2001 show extremely well,
the former leaning toward Pomerol in style. The 2005 La Dominique is solid and convincing, and the 2010 shows the 2009 what could have been. Finally, the 2015 La Dominique compensates for a lackluster 2014 with a lovely rounded texture and ample fruit.

Such pendulum swings in quality
indicate a property that needs to figure out who it is and what it wants to be,
so that it can settle upon a modus
operandi that is adaptable to changing seasons. Lying adjacent to Cheval
Blanc must invite constant comparisons with your neighbors; why not aspire to
match them? But that contiguousness obscures the fact that the two estates occupy
very different terroirs. In order to compensate, and advantaged by
deep-pocketed owners, there is a temptation to try different techniques. Yet I
can’t help feeling that La Dominique should just be happy being La Dominique.
Every château must accept that terroir is unevenly distributed, and no amount
of cash lavished on an estate can alter that fact. Biodynamics or the use of
amphorae, for example, may make cosmetic changes to the wine, but more
fundamentally, La Dominique must ensure that phenolic ripeness is achieved year
in, year out. Moreover, I’d like to see more personality in the wines. Some
vintages just felt static and – for want of a better word – soulless.

I’m optimistic that La Dominique
can attain consistency and find that much-needed personality. It may require
some ruthless parsing out of less propitious parcels, so that the Grand Vin becomes
a kind of "Tête de Cuvée”; this might not please the accountants, but I don’t
think the Fayat family is short of money. Lucas’s openness and self-criticism demonstrated
exactly the right attitude of putting pride to one side and addressing areas
that can be improved. Despite my negativity, there were enough positives to show
that La Dominique has the potential to become a Saint-Émilion/Pomerol border
estate that offers the best of both worlds. And after this tasting, well, I
still have a soft spot for La Dominique.<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=desc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=vintage&amp;wf_dirty=false&amp;wf_export_fields=&amp;wf_export_format=&amp;wf_id=&amp;wf_match=all&amp;wf_model=Wine&amp;wf_name=&amp;wf_order=vintage&amp;wf_order_type=desc&amp;wf_page=1&amp;wf_per_page=25&amp;wf_submitted=true&amp;wf_type=WillFilter%3A%3AFilter&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=2182&amp;wine_filter%5Bproducer_id%5D=4008">See the Wines from Youngest to Oldest</a>You Might Also Enjoy <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/setting-sail-malartic-lagraviere-1916-2013-apr-2019">Setting Sail - Malartic-Lagravière 1916-2013</a>, Neal Martin, April 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/what-nectar-suduiraut-1899-2015-march-2019">What Nectar!! Suduiraut 1899-2015</a>, Neal Martin, March 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/a-test-of-greatness-2009-bordeaux-ten-years-on-march-2019">A Test Of Greatness: 2009 Bordeaux Ten Years On</a>, Neal Martin, March 2019 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/outsider-looking-in-sociando-mallet-1982-2015-march-2019">Outsider Looking In: Sociando-Mallet 1982-2015</a>, Neal Martin, March 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/looking-the-part-pichon-baron-1953-2015-jan-2019">Looking The Part: Pichon-Baron 1953 – 2015</a>, Neal Martin, January 2019

Content

Engage

Vinous

Social