Mother & Child: La Lagune 1962 – 2015

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 25, 2018 

You can never start ‘em too young. That adage applies to many vocations, though this writer disputes that “wine” should be included. Case exhibit one is seated on her mother’s lap, the five or six-year old whippersnapper invited to nose a glass of La Lagune. Without hesitation the girl grabs the stem, but instead of swirling and inhaling, she spontaneously tips back the glass and takes a good slug. Is she on the path to a life of insobriety or enlightenment? I think the latter. Her mother whisks the glass away before her daughter takes another gulp and the infant oenophile looks aggrieved. That’s enough wine education – it’s barely nine in the morning. Go and play outside.

Without disrespect, my morning visit to La Lagune was most memorable, not for meeting Caroline Frey or the vertical tasting. No, it was the indefatigable ball of energy that is Caroline “junior”, with her long blonde hair, cheeky smile and unquenchable inquisitiveness. Later, as I taste the 2005 La Lagune, squeals of delight are audible out in the courtyard as she enjoys a kick-around with Caroline’s assistant. Struck by the infrequency of that sound in these parts, where many Grand Cru Classés are no longer family-owned, I rack my brain and think of the last time I visited a Bordeaux château where I heard that sound. It was a long time ago.

Despite having ventured to Bordeaux for two decades I have only met Caroline Frey on one occasion. She is strikingly pretty, with her oval face and crystal blue eyes that seem far away, as if looking through not at you. I presupposed she would be outgoing and confident, common traits within Bordeaux. Instead she comes across as someone more insular, content to spend time on her own, someone who is media savvy but does not crave the limelight. She is happy jogging around her home in Switzerland. “I like mountain running. I like to do it alone. It is a kind of meditation,” she tells me, though I kind of half-guessed already. She also has viticultural interest in Switzerland, a small vineyard in Valais that makes just 500 bottles. Of course, she must also devote time in the Rhône running the historic Paul Jaboulet & Cie, and there is reasoning to the disproportionate amount of time she spends there. “La Lagune is in one parcel, so it does not take long to inspect the vineyard. However, in the Rhône we have so many vineyards located some distance from each other that it can take three or four days just driving from one to another. So I have to spend much more time there than in Bordeaux.”

La Lagune – History

The etymology of the name might derive from the French word for lagoon, though this is inexplicable given that the estate lies at one of the highest points in the vicinity. Maybe the name refers to some geographical feature along the estuary marshes that since disappeared? It’s roots lie with the Seguineau de Lognac family. Various members owned the estate during the 18th century, where on this site, a Carthusian monastery was built at the end of the 17th century. In 1815, Abraham Lawton opined that its wine’s reputation was “exaggerated” in response to a price increase as its popularity soared in Holland. After Jouffrey Piston, an affluent landowner from Périgord, bought the estate in 1819, Lawton revised his view and acknowledged that the wines had improved. That is attested by its inclusion with 1855 classification as a troisième cru. Haut Brion apart, it is one of only five Grand Cru Classés outside the communes of Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Margaux (pop quiz: can you name the other four?) After Jouffrey died, his son inherited the estate and eventually sold in 1898 to Louis Sèze for 340,000 Francs. In 1911 it passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Albert Galy, but like so many Bordeaux properties, it suffered malaise during the 1930s when poor vintages and dwindling demand saw the 50-hectare vineyard wither to nub of under 10 hectares by the end of the 1940s, then flirted with extinction when it contracted to four hectares by 1954. It was just after this that agricultural engineer Georges Brunet bought the dilapidated estate, doubtless for a knockdown price. Unlike previous owners, Brunet had money, and from 1958, two years after the devastating late spring frosts, he embarked on a program of reconstituting the estate with new vines, purchasing an adjacent land known as “Petit La Lagune” and renovating the winery. This included a system of mechanically transferring the wine from vat to barrel and then barrel-to-barrel, known as “Téléflex”. At the time it was ahead of the curve, though perversely now at odds with the current mantra for eschewing mechanical transfer entirely. He also changed the name of the wine. Up until this point it was known as “Grand La Lagune” but henceforth he dropped the “Grand”. 

“Georges Brunet is the person who really saved La Lagune,” Caroline asserts. “There were only a few productive hectares of vineyard. He was not able to keep the winery for a long time because of the investment he made and sold it to a family in Champagne.” That is true. After his divorce deprived him of income, Brunet was forced to sell the property in 1962. That must have been a wrench given all his efforts, though he did not give up winemaking entirely, moving to Provence at Château Vignelaure. La Lagune passed into the hands of René Chayoux, whose family owned the Ayala Champagne house. The property was still not in good shape, prompting Alexis Lichine to describe René as “crazy” for committing to his purchase. Aside from continuing the replanting of abandoned parcels of the vineyard, Chayoux installed 26 epoxy-lined metal vats and gave the cellar a lick of paint. The wines up until 1964 were made by régissuer, Mon. Boirie [or Boyrie], after which his widow Jeanne continued to oversee the estate up until 1986. By all accounts she was a redoubtable woman and looks headmistress-like in a photograph depicted in Hubrecht Duijker’s “The Great Wine Château of Bordeaux”. The baton then passed to Jeanne’s daughter, Caroline Desvergnes. The change in ownership to Frey family transpired a number of years later. 

“When my father Jean-Jacques bought La Lagune it was owned by the Ducelliers who had become proprietors of the Ayala champagne house (Chayoux had no direct heirs and therefore ownership of Ayala had passed to his partner in the company). My father knew the family. Jean-Michel Ducellier phoned my father to say that he was selling La Lagune. It was always his dream to have a property on the Left Bank because he loved Cabernet Sauvignon. Jean-Michel was the president for CIVC and perhaps he was focusing more on Champagne than Bordeaux. He once told my father that he would come down for en primeur, sell everything to the négoçiants and then immediately return to Champagne. We bought the property at the end of 1999, so the first vintage we were totally responsible for was 2000. We came at the beginning of the élevage and found that everything had been put into new oak. I don’t know why. It was a strange idea [if you are selling the property]. There were a lot of things to do. We had to uproot around 20% of the vineyard. For example, there were old Merlot vines on parcels more suitable for Cabernet Sauvignon. My father liked to do everything straight away and accepted that [in uprooting in one fell swoop] there would be less production for the first few years. It was a long process. We also raised the trellising. It was really in 2004 that we started with one plot with full sustainable organic viticulture leading to total conversion in 2011. Then we asked for certification in 2013 and we obtained that in 2016, the first vintage that is entirely organic. We still have a lot of things to do, for example, in terms of copper treatment and spraying.”