Last Man Standing: Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre
BY NEAL MARTIN |
Molded rubber boots. Jeans faded by innumerable vintages. Frayed blue wool jumper that may well have witnessed the 1970s, denim jacket and a regulation flat cap, fluffs of white hair sticking out from either side, bushy eyebrows overdue effeuillage. Jean-Pierre Boyer stands amongst his vines just outside the hamlet of Virefougasse, excoriating a wine region that has lost touch. He gesticulates wildly, enunciating sentences in crescendos of pent-up incredulity and frustration until a tipping point and then, instead of exploding in rage, he deflates. A resigned shrug of shoulders and outtake of breath, as he remembers his age, and the futility and inconsequence his opinion carries. Jean-Pierre is a bona fide French paysan. See the weather-beaten face, a lifetime exposed to the elements and labor in his rudimentary winery. Feel that indefatigable spirit. Listen to those incorrigible opinions. I look upon an old man caught adrift in a modernizing landscape that extinguished his brethren long ago. However, I am not in some bucolic backwater of Burgundy or less-travelled nook of Jura. I am a five-minute drive from Château Margaux. In fact, I can see that First Growth’s vines yonder.
Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre's Jean-Pierre Boyer in the vineyard
I have met countless Bordeaux winemakers over two decades. None have been cut from the same rough-hewn cloth as the owner of Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre. Jean-Pierre Boyer is the last of his kind. Dominique Dupuch, my intermediary who kindly arranged the visit since Jean-Pierre rarely entertains journalists, remarks that there are only two or three like him left in Bordeaux, all in the twilight of their lives and destined to take their memories with them. Although it is not the most famous or familiar château I will ever write about, Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre constitutes one of the most important. It might be the last or the only time that I will meet bygone Bordeaux face-to-face.
Born May 1933, Jean-Pierre Boyer’s energy belies the fact that he is about to turn eighty-five – nothing unusual there. Many winemakers work until they are physically incapable. What is remarkable is that Jean-Pierre is embarking upon his 68th vintage at the same property. That is not a typo. Sixty-eight vintages. Think about that for a moment. The first vintage under his aegis was 1950, fourteen years before Jean-Claude Berrouet, five years before Lalou Bize-Leroy. This man remembers helping his father Pierre make the 1947 vintage. His calloused hands tended the vines and bottled the 1947, 1949, 1959, 1961, 1982, 2009 and one hopes, 2018, and everything between. Even more astonishing is that his modus operandi, his tenets and practices, remained unaltered from his first day to this. It is forgotten Bordeaux made corporeal and if you don’t believe me, then I guarantee you will by the time you finish reading this article.
Before I continue, let me forewarn that Jean-Pierre is not a man for details. He doesn’t do them. He tells me that he’s too old for those kinds of things and doubts their importance. I am able to glean that he owns around a considerable 50-hectares of vines scattered over all five communes within Margaux, some under long-standing fermage agreements with Château Ferrière, Lucien Lurton being an old friend. It implies Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre produces a large volume; however, the parcel directly outside the winery lies fallow with wild grass and poppies. “I pulled up the vines in 1956 after they were killed by the frost and I just never got round to replanting,” he explains. “I could do it, I suppose.” Jean-Pierre seems content to look upon the fallow land, exercising his right to not plant any vines, to the chagrin of his neighbors. The parcel beyond is pot-marked by numerous gaping holes between vines, aesthetically akin to some ancient old Grenache vineyards I saw in Rioja, incongruous in a region that prides itself on regimented high-density rows manicured to within an inch of their lives. He divulges that at some point, he exchanged several parcels with Château Margaux; indeed, one of his plots is adjacent to Pavillon Blanc de Margaux. This exchange transpired before the Mentzelopoulos family bought the First Growth, when Pierre Ginestet was the proprietor. Digging around texts I found that only 13-hectares are farmed with some rented out to neighbors, which means annual production is roughly 2,500 cases.
The vines. Wow. I have visited most of the major vineyards in Bordeaux and never encountered any like these. “I have vines that are over 100-years old, maybe dating back to the 1870s on their own roots,” Boyer tells me, vanquishing the idea that the only Gallic vines on their original roots lie chez Bollinger. Winemakers often boast about the age of their vines, exaggerating and adding a few years. Inspecting these veterans close-up, they must constitute not just some of the oldest in Bordeaux, but in France. “Look at this one,” he says gleefully. “It looks like a trombone!” And he’s not joking. It’s gnarled and twisted into a warped corkscrew, its ugly form its warped beauty. Some vines are scarred down to the bone, almost splayed open. Jean-Pierre demonstrates how he cuts and scrapes away any disease with a knife. One vine clearly shows where at some indeterminate point, instead of the orthodox practice of re-grafting the vine onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstock, the tendril was buried into the soil to propagate a new vine. This is the first time I have seen this largely abandoned technique in Bordeaux. That erstwhile spur is now an inch thick trunk plunging back into the terra firma, popping up next door as a new vine. Yields must be criminally low and not because of any ultra-low-yield dogma. I don’t ask the proportion of grape plantings because I know Jean-Pierre will just scratch his head and laugh at such a banal question. Later, I learn from David Peppercorns’ Bordeaux guide that the planting is 35% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc and 15% Petit Verdot and, according to old Féret guides, there was once Malbec. Use that as a rough guide since those figures would be skewed by expired vines since that book was published.
Old vine at Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre
Whilst examining the vines, Boyer pontificates on modernity, laughing when I enquire whether he has a mobile phone. This provokes a diatribe against those that visit vineyards and remain glued to their smartphone. I feel a momentary guilt as mine records our conversation though I give up after 10 minutes. It’s better to just memorize everything and type my recollections on the flight home later that day. When he broaches the current state of Bordeaux, Jean-Pierre is implacable. His favorite two catchphrases are: “It is all cinema” and “It’s all blah, blah, blah.” He regards contemporary Bordeaux as just a show, jejune and superficial. In many ways he is perfectly correct. He sees the glitz and gloss as ersatz facets of Bordeaux, extraneous to the alchemy of turning grapes into wine.
If you read only one of my Bordeaux articles this year, make it this one. In twenty years of visiting the region I have never come across a property like this Margaux, never seen vines as ancient as these and never met a winemaker like Jean-Pierre Boyer, one of the last of his kind. Bel-Air Marquis d’Aligre illustrates what Bordeaux has gained with modernity and money, and what it has lost.
