Enigma Variations: Lafleur 1955-2015
BY NEAL MARTIN |
Commencing our vinous odysseys, we set out on our own individual paths of discovery. Some wines become familiar right away; others remain out of touch. Budding oenophiles embark upon “the chase,” hunting new growers and filling gaps in vintages never tasted. When I began my own journey, I rarely had two pennies to rub together, and when I did, they were spent on vinyl records, wine or food, in that order of priority. Circumstances, luck and dogged determination introduced many Bordeaux wines to my palate, but one château eluded me: Lafleur. It was the cunning fox, always out of sight, always just over the horizon. Its elusiveness only enhanced its enigma and my yearning to track it down.
I finally succeeded during en primeur 2003. Jacques Guinaudeau was friendly and charismatic, with a magnificent bushy mustache long overdue effeuillage; he looked like a North Sea fisherman who had just taken off his sou’wester. His wife Sylvie was so down-to-earth that it was difficult to reconcile the fact that she co-owned one of the most famous estates in the world. Their son Baptiste was in tow, sporting long, tousled hair and dressed as if he had come directly from a skateboard park. He was learning the ropes from Jacques, and so he and I chatted about wine – and incidentally discovered a mutual appreciation for the Beastie Boys. Baptiste has come a long way since then. I recently drove past Lafleur and chanced upon him standing in the road, deep in discussion with a foreman, poring over plans for their near-complete new cuverie, the biggest change to Lafleur since its formation. Baptiste calls the shots these days, along with his better half Julie, but he still has long hair and a soft spot for Brooklyn’s finest rappers.
Since that first encounter with Lafleur, my palate has been blessed with numerous vintages over the years, including a memorable vertical back to the 1920s held in Attersee, Austria, literally the day before the deadline for my Pomerol book. I actually delayed publication because Lafleur was such a cornerstone of that work. Retrospectives that extend past 1982 are few and far between, in no small part because the Guinaudeaus possess no library stock or, for that matter, any records beyond that year. This only deepens the mystery surrounding the wines that were made by the “two little birds,” the nickname I gave to Marie and Thérèse Robin, the sisters who owned and ran Lafleur from 1946.
This article covers wines from both the Robin and the Guinaudeau eras, tasted in two separate Lafleur retrospectives. The first formed part of Omar Khan’s International Wine & Business series of tastings held at Ten Trinity Square in London, ranging from the 1950s up to the 1999 and embracing less frequently spotted off-vintages and undisputed legends. The second was held at Christie’s auction house and attended by Jacques and Sylvie Guinaudeau. Here the focus was post-2000-vintage releases of both Lafleur and Pensées de Lafleur. For completeness, I have supplemented these notes with several culled from my Pomerol book.
The magnificent lineup of Lafleur back to the 1950s at Ten Trinity Square
History
In 1872, Henri Greloud purchased a farmhouse and a small area of land known as Domaine de Gay. He decided to keep one block of vines separate from the remainder of the vineyard and christened it Lafleur. (In the 1893 edition of the Féret guide, Lafleur already commands high prices compared to its peers.) When Henri died in 1900, his son Charles inherited Lafleur, while his other son, Edgar, was given Château Grand Village in Mouillac. In 1915, Charles died childless, and Edgar’s daughter and her husband André Robin inherited Lafleur and Le Gay. André Robin tended the properties up until his own passing in 1946, whereupon the vineyards landed in the aproned laps of his daughters, Marie and Thérèse. The sisters were two peas in a pod, neither of them betrothed despite several suitors, and leading frugal but seemingly contented lives, cycling between Libourne and Pomerol, pottering about the vines and nattering with Mme. Loubat at Petrus. Neither Marie nor Thérèse really knew much about winemaking, and they famously allowed their chickens to cluck and poop around the cellar, so it was not the most spotless chai in Pomerol. Their naïveté meant they had no option but to adopt their father’s tenets, and apart from allowing poultry to wander at will, their one basic rule was to pick Lafleur after Le Gay. That unwitting application of the practice of late harvesting is one reason why some postwar vintages became legends.
Though prone to inconsistency, the quality of Lafleur was in no doubt, so that it gained a small but loyal following. There was little overseas interest, apart from the Benelux countries, where Pomerol wines were presciently appreciated, and Lafleur never cracked America, where Jean-Pierre Moueix was pouring Petrus and building its reputation. When the sisters became old and infirm, they asked Christian Moueix and Jean-Claude Berrouet to take charge of the vineyard and vinification. The pair oversaw the astonishing 1982 Lafleur and an outstanding follow-up 12 months later. But when Thérèse died in 1984, Marie Robin asked Jacques and Sylvie Guinaudeau, descendants of the Greloud family now ensconced at Grand Village, to take stewardship.
Jacques and Sylvie Guinaudeau in the Christie’s boardroom in May 2018
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Lafleur is a property that I have researched and written about extensively over the years. And yet something enigmatic remains about this Pomerol château. This article lifts the lid on its history, the vineyard, its winemaker, and the Robin and Guinaudeau families, charting the progress of its wines over several decades courtesy of two extraordinary verticals and some spellbinding wines.
