Myrat runs a fairly small production, producing 20,000
bottles per vintage, each one aged for 20 months in
French oak. “It is very important to select the best
berries so we only hand-pick, bunch by bunch, berry
by berry,” says de Pontac-Ricard, as we wander between
rows of plump, nobly rotting sémillon. On the back
wall of the barrel room, an old grandfather clock ticks
away. “The time is very long in Sauternais. For us,
this is not a dessert wine. It is an apéritif or digestif to
relax and meditate with.”
Driving past château after château is a meditation
in itself, with or without the Sauternes. There’s Château
Latour in Pauillac, owned by French billionaire François
Pinault; Château Lagrange in Saint-Julien, owned by
Japanese-whisky royalty, the family Suntory; and the
list goes on. Many boast Michelin-starred restaurants,
boutique hotels and celebrity architects. Château
Lynch-Bages, for example, has just wrapped up a major
renovation, headed by the sons of IM Pei, architect
of the pyramids at the Louvre in Paris.
We drive north towards Saint-Estèphe and
Tonnellerie Morlier, one of the remaining family-run
cooperages in the Haut-Médoc. We’re here to meet
Denis Morlier, a former carpenter turned professional
cooper, who handcrafts the region’s prized French-oak
wine barrels. The workshop is sandwiched between vast
swathes of cabernet sauvignon vines and, at the end of
the driveway, towering stacks of oak-barrel staves have
been left to “season” in the elements. Morlier, in a stiff
brown apron, linen shirt and old sneakers, greets us
with a glass of Grand Cru that was aged in one of his
Bordelaise barrels. It’s not long before our chatter is
silenced by the thwack of the cooper’s axe. He splits a
log to demonstrate the making of the staves, and begins
to assemble them inside a metal hoop. It’s mesmerising
to watch: Morlier knocks a mallet on the top and middle
rings with a slow rhythm for the first “hooping” and
from there, his dance builds in speed and precision.
Most of the oak comes from Allier, one of the five oak
forests in central France, he tells us via translator.
GOURMET TRAVELLER 153