So Chic, So Listrac: Fourcas Hosten
BY NEAL MARTIN |
The Bordelais have always been the epitome of chic – in the way they carry themselves, in their deportment, in how they dress irrespective of age. They cannot countenance shabbiness. Perhaps at home they slob around in tatty jogging bottoms and flip-flops, but the boulevards of Bordeaux are a veritable crisscross of catwalks and luxury boutiques. Perhaps then, it is unsurprising that fashion houses have been lured to Bordeaux and acquired some its most famous châteaux.
Another lesser-known connection between luxury brands is Hermès and Fourcas Hosten, though it is important to distinguish between corporate and family ownership. Fourcas Hosten is like Rauzan-Ségla and Canon insofar as they are both personally owned by the Wertheimer family, not Chanel; likewise, Fourcas Hosten is not owned by Hermès but by two of its board members, Renaud and Laurent Momméja.
It was time to discover more about this Listrac estate, and so, following a tasting of recent vintages, I smartened myself up (alas, no Hermès pocket square) and spoke to Renaud Momméja and winemaker Eloi Jacob.
Renaud Momméja, co-proprietor at Fourcas Hosten.
“For my brother and me, the adventure began almost 15 years ago when we purchased the property,” Momméja told me via Zoom, coming across relaxed and affable. “My brother Laurent and I wanted to invest in something with a sense of history, and we were both great amateurs of fine wines. Our grandfather had been fascinated by Bordeaux. In fact, he was a good friend of Steven Spurrier when he was in the retail business in Paris. My grandfather was a customer and became a very good friend. When I met Spurrier in Bordeaux in 2006, he knew that we were relatives, but he was unaware that we were his friend’s grandchildren. I lived with my grandfather in Paris for two years and I remember that every day at every meal, they drank 1976 Léoville–Las Cases. That was the time you could drink great wines at a good price. That was how we were raised and why we wanted to invest in a property.”
“We had the opportunity to buy after Peter Sichel put the property up for sale. We visited and thought it was the perfect place. The terroir was very interesting, but the property at that time was not in a good shape. I was attracted by the unusual composition of the vineyard in two distinct plots: the clay-limestone soils on the Listrac plain located at a peak of 43 meters above sea level, and the Pyrenean gravel on the Fourcas plateau. That was a good foundation."
Château Fourcas Hosten.
History
Ransacking my shelves of wine literature, I found little about Fourcas Hosten. “Hostein” is mentioned in the Tastet et Lawton archives in the mid-18th century, though at 310 livres per tonneau, it fetched a relatively low price compared to others. The estate belonged to Monsieur Hostein until 1810, whereupon it was sold to the Saint-Affrique family, who owned the Moulis property of Gressier Grand-Poujeaux. Baron Bernard de Saint-Affrique was the residing proprietor at the turn of the 20th century, and production was around 100 tonneaux per annum, although this figure dwindled to about half that amount by the 1940s. Fourcas Hosten passed through generations of the Saint-Affrique family, which is perhaps why so little was written about it. There were no seismic changes until 1971, when Fourcas Hosten was sold to Peter Sichel, from a different branch of the family than the one that owned Château d’Angludet. Sichel rebuilt the chartreuse that lies opposite the Romanesque church in the town of Listrac-Médoc, but since he resided in New York, responsibility for winemaking was handed to Patrice Pagès of neighboring Fourcas-Dupré. Then, in 2006, Fourcas Hosten changed hands once again, to the Momméja brothers.
The Bordelais have always been the epitome of chic – in the way they carry themselves, in their deportment, in how they dress irrespective of age. They cannot countenance shabbiness. Perhaps at home they slob around in tatty jogging bottoms and flip-flops, but the boulevards of Bordeaux are a veritable crisscross of catwalks and luxury boutiques. Perhaps then, it is unsurprising that fashion houses have been lured to Bordeaux and acquired some its most famous châteaux.
