THE WUNDERKIND
VIANNEY DE TASTES

The meteoric rise of Vianney de Tastes has aroused both admiration and disbelief. In 2000, this young man with curly blond hair was forced to abandon a riding career because of knee problems. His father, who had just bought some vines on the northern tip of the Médoc peninsula, suggested he run the vineyard. De Tastes—just 20 at the time—agreed, although he knew next to nothing about winemaking. Yet in barely a year, he came out with a rich, fruity red that all the critics hailed as a masterpiece. Robert Parker even gave de Tastes’s 2000 Château Beaulieu a rating of 88/100.
    “There must be some kind of trick,” scoffed the gossipmongers. But de Tastes’s “secret” is quite simple: He’s a good listener and he’s not the least bit dogmatic. “I went around collecting lots of advice, particularly from Olivier Dauga, a talented consultant,” he explains. “I ignored all the grand theories and took a more empirical approach. My first wine involved a lot of trial and error. I slept in the cellar more than once!”
    The young vintner also started out with a big advantage: healthy, high-quality vines planted in a well-drained soil. He maximized it through a rigorous grape selection and small yields.
    Always looking for ways to make improvements, he flew to Australia in 2001 to gain additional training from a winemaking uncle. “The most important thing that experience taught me was how important it is to maintain an absolutely spotless environment in the cellar,” he observes.
    Château Beaulieu skillfully avoided the trap that so many petits crus in the region have fallen into: the temptation to imitate the great wines, with their bitter tannins and heavy oakiness. De Tastes instead opted to bring out the fruity notes of his ripe, fleshy Bordeaux Supérieur. Of course, success always comes at a price: Now he’s got to work twice as hard to live up to his own reputation.
Château Beaulieu, 33240 Salignac. Tel. 33/6-23-17-19-88; Fax 33/5-56-81-73-85.

THE "ANTIQUAIRE"
JULIE GONET-MÉDEVILLE

Julie Gonet-Médeville is often called “l’antiquaire de Sauternes.” It’s a curious title. What does this lively young woman have to do with antiques? The answer lies in her family history: For more than half a century, the Médevilles have let their Sauternes age for decades in concrete vats. The wines never see the inside of a wooden barrel—they go directly from vat to bottle.
    Like so many great discoveries, this original method came about by chance. In the 1930s, Julie’s grandfather, René de Médeville, was feeling the effects of the economic slump that had hit the whole area. He decided to build concrete vats to replace the barrels that were both costly and hard to come by. After a few years, he observed that the wines were breathing well, maturing more slowly and developing more complex aromas. Thus Château Gilette, a Sauternes petit cru, became legendary for its old vintages.
    Unlike her two older sisters, Gonet-Médeville, 30, always wanted to be a winemaker. After studying law, she worked alongside her parents for seven years and, in 2004, officially took over her family’s properties: Gilette, Les Justices (a more traditional Sauternes) and Respide-Médeville, which produces red and white Graves. She also brought something new to the table: Champagne Gonet-Médeville, a small house founded by her husband, Xavier Gonet, a young champenois oenologist.
    Does the couple ever get confused, what with producing wines that are so different from one another? “In a profession like winemaking, which can be tough and repetitive, diversity’s a good thing,” they insist. And although they’d like to experiment a bit on the Graves property and in Champagne, it’s hands off at Château Gilette: “You have to get used to the idea that wine put in a vat today won’t be sold for another 20 years,” Gonet-Médeville says. “It’s a whole different relationship with time.”
Château Gilette, 33210 Preignac. Tel. 33/5-56-76-28-44; Fax 33/5-56-76-28-43.

THE ARTISAN
LAURENT REBES

The stereotypical Médoc winemaker loves three things: fishing, hunting and his grapevines. Laurent Rebes is guilty on all counts. Born in Bégadan on the banks of the Gironde, he’s completely attuned to the special rhythm that links his land to the river’s estuary. This intimate familiarity with the terroir no doubt explains the success of Château Garance Haut Grenat, a cru artisanal (a category defined by small plot size and hands-on involvement by the owner) that can easily pass for a cru bourgeois. At €10 to €12, some wine critics are calling it Bordeaux’s best value.
    At 39, Rebes is already an old hand at making great wines. After studying oenology at the prestigious Ecole de la Tour Blanche, he spent 15 years producing Médoc grands crus—first at La Tour de By as a cellar worker and then at Rollan de By as cellar master. “That second experience really shaped me,” he confides. “The owner placed all his trust in me; I had carte blanche.” Yet despite all that exhilarating freedom, something was missing: He wanted to work for himself.
    In 1998, Rebes took the plunge. He took over his family’s vines—some 10 acres that were made into wine at the local Bégadan Cooperative—and created Château Garance Haut Grenat. There he does everything from spreading fertilizer to pruning vines to marketing. His plots form little islands among the area’s grands crus bourgeois: La Tour de By, Greysac and Rollan de By. But these stony hills hold no secrets for the knowledgeable Rebes, who produces an elegant wine with a supple body that combines oak with spices and anise. “I’m an artisan in the true sense of the term. I work at home, and I’m involved in the entire process,” he says proudly. “And no matter how successful a vintage is, every year I have to prove myself all over again.”
Château Garance Haut Grenat, 33340 Bégadan. Tel. 5/56-41-37-61; Fax 33/5-56-41-37-61.

THE HEIR APPARENT
JEAN-CHARLES CAZES

The resemblance between the two men is striking. Both share the same gestures, the same cadences of speech, the same generous expression. It’s evident at a glance that they’re closely related. Indeed, Jean-Charles Cazes, 30, is the youngest child and only son of Jean-Michel Cazes, the current proprietor of the prestigious Château Lynch-Bages. Passionate about oenology, he is expected to succeed his father someday at the head of this grand cru classé.
    Lynch-Bages has been in the Cazes family for three generations, and some say it’s hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. The property was purchased in 1934 by Jean-Charles’s great-grandfather, who also owned Château les Ormes de Pez in Saint-Estèphe. Under the family’s stewardship, Lynch-Bages has continued to gain in elegance and suppleness. There’s a consensus among wine critics that this 1855 fifth growth today deserves a place among the best second growths.
    Does this increasingly stellar reputation intimidate the château’s heir apparent? For the time being, Cazes prefers to take it slow and experience new things. From his mother, who was born in Mozambique, he acquired a taste for far-off lands; after studying economics, he spent several years working in Brazil’s auto industry. But little by little, his love of the grapevines—the family obsession—has been catching up with him.
    Since returning to France, he has been in charge of creating new brands for J.M. Cazes Sélection, a distribution company founded by his father in 2002, and helped launch Circus, a Languedoc wine with a playful, contemporary image. “Far from resting on his laurels, my dad is always looking for the next challenge, the next project,” he explains. “In our house there’s no such thing as a generation gap.”
    Already comfortable with representing Lynch-Bages abroad, notably in the United States, Cazes knows that he must also carry on his family’s famous tradition of art de vivre. His forerunners have opened gourmet restaurants, co-founded the Commanderie du Bontemps du Médoc to promote the area’s wines and traditions, and are great patrons of the arts, notably holding exhibitions at Lynch-Bages. Young Cazes is already looking forward to fostering this unique connection between artisan and artist, wine and art.
Château Lynch-Bages, 33250 Pauillac. Tel. 33/5-56-73-24-00; Fax 33/5-56-59-26-42.

THE PRESERVATIONIST
RENAUD PHILIPPE

Renaud Philippe is the only Bordeaux producer to make wine from century-old rootstocks—an extraordinary feat when you realize that 40 is already considered ancient. Since 2001 his Château Clos Saint-Emilion Philippe has featured a special cuvée whose name—“101,” “102,” “103” and soon “104”—corresponds to the age of his grapevines. Philippe, 28, has developed great affection for these plants “rooted in the 19th century.”
    Spared by the phylloxera epidemic that ravaged the area’s vineyards between 1850 and 1910, the vines grow on a small plot in Saint-Emilion purchased by Philippe’s great-grandfather, a renowned nurseryman, in 1927 to supplement his 445-acre property. Planted in sandy soil, they enjoyed natural protection from phylloxera, which needs a clay soil to become established. This peculiarity long went unnoticed; at most, it was observed that these old grapevines produced less than the others.
    In the early ’90s, Philippe’s father inherited 20 acres, including this parcel. In addition to looking after his medical practice, he earned some critical success with his Saint-Emilion grand cru. In 1998, Renaud took over the property after completing his studies in viticulture and oenology. He then began the long process of classifying the vines in order to identify the particular characteristics of each plot. When his sister Sandrine joined him to run the business in 2001, he was about to pull out the old vines that offered such low yields. A consultant friend dissuaded him and suggested he use the small grapes to make a special cuvée. The results were astonishing: The wine was both concentrated and fresh, with notes of black fruits and licorice. One savors it all the more knowing that it comes from rootstocks that survived the epidemics and frosts of the last century.
    But Philippe is already contemplating his 100-year-old vines with nostalgia. “Nothing lasts forever; they’ll die soon,” he says. “But it makes me glad to think that by dying of old age, they’ll not only have outlasted phylloxera—they’ll have the last word.”
ChÂteau Clos Saint-Emilion Philippe, 33500 Libourne. Tel. 33/5-57-51-05-93; Fax 33/5-57-25-96-39.