Moving On: Lafon-Rochet
1955-2017

BY NEAL MARTIN |&nbsp;JUNE 20, 2023Bordeaux
moves on quickly. Changes in ownership can be met with protest and handwringing,
yet they amount to little more than “rearrangements of furniture”. The room remains
the same. The soil and vines are unmoved while proprietors change; their tenures
are consigned to history. Time moves on, inexorable and impatient, rarely
inclined to look back. However, that is precisely what I will do for this piece.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1687271756365-lafon+rochet+basile+and+michel_copy.jpg">Basile
with his father, Michel Tesseron. 

Back in
the summer of 2021, I joined Basile Tesseron for a long-planned vertical
tasting. Tesseron was chatty and amiable as ever, and we were briefly joined by
his father, Michel. Spanning six decades, the line-up of wines confirmed the
evolution of Lafon-Rochet since Guy Tesseron purchased the property in 1960. Though
it can be argued that Lafon-Rochet never produced a bona fide transcendent wine
that might challenge the Cos-Montrose-Calon trinity, its amelioration over the
last decade cannot be ignored. During our tasting, Tesseron spoke about the context
of the vintages with some interesting backstories.Tasting
what was presumed to be the unlabelled 1955, which later transpired out to be
the 1964 Lafon-Rochet, he unveils perhaps the darker, less quixotic side
of harvests in bygone days. “We used to work with Romani people and detainees,” Tesseron explains. “There was a knife
fight between them, so my grandfather brandished a rifle and, together with the
police, managed to stop them. As a consequence, we bought a machine harvester,
and this is the only vintage picked by machine. In the mid-Seventies, we
started using pickers from northern Portugal, which we have used ever since.”
As we broach the 2000 Lafon-Rochet, Tesseron tells me how he was working
in London for luxury conglomerate Richemoine and how his interest in wine was
piqued when he began drinking red wine with the manager instead of cocktails. But
it was attending a private dinner with a London wine merchant when he
experienced an epiphany. Sotto voce, the host said that Basile would love the
bottle about to be poured. So, it turned out, it had such a profound effect
that Tesseron, rendered speechless and almost overcome, made excuses to leave.
That wine was a Romanée-Saint-Vivant from Lalou Bize-Leroy. As he retells this
anecdote, it reminds me how Tesseron has always been a refreshingly emotional
vigneron, someone led by his heart rather than mind, who wears his heart on his
sleeve. That wine convinced him that he had to become a winemaker, which is precisely
what he set out to do. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1687271778220-lafon+rochet+old+bottles_copy.jpg">As we
taste the 2003 Lafon-Rochet, we discuss freshness. “My father was
obsessed with freshness,” Tesseron continues. “He began his career at
Sherry-Lehman in New York. He had wanted to be a banker and found a job on Wall
Street, but he only stayed there for two months. His first love was Napa wines.
It was the beginning of the Napa industry in the early Seventies, and he saw
how these wines were evolving. Later, he saw how those wines were becoming massive
and losing freshness. In 2003, when he saw the weather conditions, he knew he
had to pick early, so he cropped in two weeks. At the time, I was working in
Bordeaux for Vins des Maison Bordeaux. The weather conditions were
amazing during harvest. I remember my father said he might not be there the
next time you see a vintage with such ripeness levels. I’m glad we picked
early. The clay soils really helped - half the estate is based on that.” 

Tesseron
tells me how his father was immensely proud of the 2005 Lafon-Rochet, but
it was not always smooth sailing after he joined Lafon-Rochet in 2007. “I had a
fight with the technical director as I did not want any more Roundup on the
vines. That was my obsession [perhaps inspired by Leroy’s viticultural approach
and no doubt others like her]. We had to switch ways. He didn’t care at all. We
had a physical fight in our office. He was strong, but I was young. I came back
at 5am the next day and had a week to learn what everyone was doing. I called
Jean-Michel Comme, former estate manager at Pontet-Canet, my wife (Berangère
Carsberg) and Frédéric Renaut, who worked in the vines. After two years, I
asked Lucas Leclercq to join us as general manager. It might be my favorite period
because we had so many things to do. Most of the time, I was in the vines or
between the cellar and the vines.”The 2008
Lafon-Rochet prompts another discussion. “I made a huge mistake. As
Pontet-Canet [owned by Alfred Tesseron] was turning organic and biodynamic, I
said that we would not treat the vines this year, and consequently, we ended up
the only estate with a huge mildew attack. Frédéric Renaut waited until I was
in Singapore before telling me. This is during a period when I should have
stopped traveling. We ended up with 30hl/ha, and when I told my father, he said
it was not a total loss and to think of it as a ‘half-win’. I learned that we
could reduce products we used in the vines [which is what they succeeded in
doing by 2010], and it is also the year we started planting bushes around the
estate.” <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1687271808178-lafon+rochet+bottles_copy.jpg">After
back-to-back successes, incidentally with the services of the late Denis
Dubourdieu, in 2009 and 2010, the 2011 vintage brought
Basile Tesseron down to earth. “We had a hailstorm on 1 September. I saw the
whole production destroyed in minutes. It was like a machine gun. You had to
fight and find a way to make a decent wine because you knew that in a few years,
nobody would remember there was a hailstorm. It was an early vintage. We knew
it wasn’t ripe, and we had lost half the production. You couldn’t make a wine
out of the green berries, and so we gambled. The next day was above 40°C, which
dried out the berries scarred by the hail, and in the end, we picked quite
late. I am proud of this vintage because of the complexity of the
harvest."&nbsp; Tasting
the 2012 Lafon-Rochet, Dubourdieu shoes were filled by a Pomerol icon. “That
was our first year with Jean-Claude Berrouet. The idea of switching from Denis
to Jean-Claude is because I had always been a fan of his wines. They had elegant
tannins. He is the king of clay, which is what I was looking for. His approach
is very humble. There were long discussions. He gave us that extra touch. It
was Lucas Leclercq that called him,
and Jean-Claude Berrouet replied that if he could work with me, he would love
to. He understood we wanted to make wine that we love to drink.” 

As
we taste the 2015 Lafon-Rochet, Tesseron explains how the vintage’s
reputation did not spare him from a stressful picking. “We had a huge storm at
the beginning of harvest, and we had to stop. The harvesters were in the room
eating. We had to wait almost five days because everything was so wet, then
restarted slowly, so it was a drawn-out picking. The Merlot was ripe, but the Cabernet
had to wait.”

After
this, Tesseron visited Piedmont for the first time, another revelation since
the trip altered his way of thinking about wine, particularly concerning acidity.
Later, in 2018, there was a great furor when he went against the tide of
popular opinion and moved away from organic farming that they had practiced
over the last eight years. Tesseron was concerned about the levels of copper
being used and encountered stiff rebukes from more evangelical organic
winemakers and on social media. Personally, I felt that Tesseron made many
valid points, notwithstanding that he still advocated the use of non-polluting
synthetic chemicals. By this point, as the ambassador of Lafon-Rochet, Tesseron
was obliged to travel. He enjoyed the peripatetic aspect of this vocation, not
least meeting new people, but as time went by, there was a simmering sense of
dissatisfaction. “You
don’t feel like a winemaker anymore,” he says, “and after a few years, I
decided that was not my life.” In his last couple of years at Lafon-Rochet, Tesseron
eschewed the glitzy side of running of classed growth and dedicated most of his
time to the vineyard or his family.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1687271831796-lafon+rochet+line+up_copy.jpg">Basile Tesseron tasting through the Lafon-Rochet lineup.&nbsp;What Happened Next After
the vertical, the conversation continued at Château Larrivaux, the Haut-Médoc
estate inherited from Carsberg’s side of the family. I remember feeling as if something
was amiss. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something unspoken. We talked about biodiversity
and agroforestry. Tesseron was enthused about planting 2,500 trees that year,
and in hindsight, this long-term project gave a misleading sense of continuity.
Weeks later, Tesseron told me that his heart had moved on from Lafon-Rochet
that day. In August 2021, I found out the reason why. It was announced that real-estate
investor Jacky Lorenzetti had purchased the Fourth Growth for an undisclosed sum,
a sum reflecting the fact that Grand Cru Classés rarely come up for sale.
Lafon-Rochet was added to Lorenzetti’s portfolio that includes his other
Saint-Estèphe, Lilian-Ladouys, as well as Château Pédesclaux in Pauillac and
Château d’Issan in Margaux. Sixty-one years of ownership by a dynasty
synonymous with the Médoc would end.

I was taken
aback. Tesseron had always been devoted to the estate, his family’s future bound
up in its vines. His aunt, co-proprietor alongside his father, had decided to sell
her shareholding, and it was too much for any family member to buy, one assumes,
including Alfred Tesseron. There was no foul play. But to Michel and especially
Basile Tesseron, it must have felt that the château had been “stolen” in broad
daylight, the carpet pulled out from under its devoted guardian and future
owner. Returning just before he was due to hand in the château keys, Basile
Tesseron seemed drained after such a protracted family dispute, dealing with
lawyers and legalese that conspired to drag him away from his vines. A fresh
start for him and his young family suddenly seemed appealing. It was a new
beginning.After
vinifying their valedictory 2021 vintage, the Tesseron family vacated
Lafon-Rochet. Jacky Lorenzetti appointed the able Christophe Congé as managing
director, Congé having spent 22 years next door as an oenologist at
Lafite-Rothschild/Duhart-Milon. Speaking to Congé in subsequent visits, there
are plans to convert the vines to organic viticulture in line with their other
estates.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1687271907516-lafon+rochet+facade_copy.jpg">The distinctive chartreuse-hued façade was pale blue not so long ago.

In
January 2023, I made a short trip to Bordeaux to tie up a few loose ends of
forthcoming articles and, by chance, received a message from Basile Tesseron
asking when I would next be down. I had not heard from him since the sale, and
we met for supper in Bordeaux with his wife and Larrivaux’s winemaker. I found
him happy. Much happier than I expected. Chipper. There was that smile and wry
wit. The sale of Lafon-Rochet must cause heartache, thinking about what might
have been. However, the responsibility, administrative duties and traveling that
his position obliged diverted him away from what he really loved. Though no
longer part of the Grand Cru Classé and all the attendant camaraderie, he
remains good friends with those closest to him. I got the sense that the storm
had passed. Tesseron is now busy hatching plans for Larrivaux, including
planting around a disused quarry and making the château itself habitable so
that one day he might move there.

Lafon-Rochet
moved on.

So
has Basile Tesseron. © 2023, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.<hr> You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/you-re-unbelievable-bordeaux-2022-may-2023">You’re Unbelievable: Bordeaux 2022</a>, Neal Martin, May 2023 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/lower-your-sails-or-breeches-beychevelle-1929-2019-mar-2023">Lower Your Sails (Or Breeches): Beychevelle 1929-2019</a>, Neal Martin, March 2023 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/not-classed-but-classy-haut-bergeron-1961-2019-mar-2023">Not Classed, but Classy: Haut-Bergeron 1961-2019</a>, Neal Martin, March 2023 <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/bordeaux-2019-the-southwold-tasting-feb-2023">Bordeaux 2019: The Southwold Tasting</a>, Neal Martin, February 2023

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