Chateau Beausejour: A Cinderella Story from Stephane Derenoncourt
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Chateau Beausejour
This is a short story about one of Bordeaux’s most famous wine maker and how his touch creates Cinderella stories wherever he goes. It is also a story about one of the best undiscovered values in the 2005 Bordeaux vintage.
Buying Bordeaux Futures for me has two parts to it: the glamour - tasting the big, famous chateaux that will wow us with their seductive personalities and knock us over with their stratospheric prices. You do not have to be a genius to buy these wines, they are reported on and praised everywhere. The demand is huge and the prices match this popularity. I absolutely want some of these bottles – but they are all special occasion, eat in the dinning room bottles to be stored, and savored in the future.
But then there’s the other part of a great vintage: the discovery and DRINKING part. That’s all about FINDING the great "undiscovered heros" of the vintage with fantastic quality at much lower prices where I can buy a case or two. Wines I can uncork right away and enjoy – be astonished by -- OFTEN over the next ten or so years.
This is Beausejour. Given the exceptional quality of the 2005 vintage, Bordeaux is offering up perhaps an unprecedentedly long list of truly great petit chateaux and I plan on taking advantage of this. I am going to take my extensive tasting notes from my April trip to Bordeaux and buy little wonders that I can afford from the best small high quality and rising star estates.
From a patch of the finest land in Montagne St Emilion comes Chateau Beausejour. Beausejour was purchased by Patricia and Pierre Bernault in 2004. They immediately made a major investment to realize their dream of making great wine from their new property. The entire estate has had an extensive facelift which included not only work in the vineyards, but also the chai. But, by far, the most important decision that Patricia and Pierre made was to enlist the aid of Stephane, wine maker - to-the-stars, Derenoncourt.
Born about as far as you can get from Bordeaux, in Dunkerque, Stephane hitchhiked to Bordeaux because of a girl. He started picking grapes during the harvest to eat. He landed in St Emilion in time for the spectacular 1990 harvest. He started working in the cellars of Pavie MacQuin (now over $ 100 per bottle) and then things came together for Stephane. Comte Stephan Neipperg asked Stephane to take over as the winemaker at Canon La Gaffeliere seeing he had “the touch” with grapes.
Stephane helped with the debut of garage wine, La Mondotte (now over $150 per bottle) that was introduced in 1996 by Neipperg. It was one of the very first garage wines and today is one of the finest and most sought after wines from St Emilion. In 1997 Stephane Derenoncourt started consulting with other chateau owners to improve their wines. He manages over 20 estates and watches over the wines “all the way from the bud to the glass”. Every one of these estates is making vastly better wine because of Stephane’s contribution.
He practices “biodynamics” to the extent that it works. He avoids violent manipulation of the grapes like mechanical destemming. Stephane will sweep the vineyard three or even four times to ensure all the grapes going into a wine are ripe. He doesn’t like to crush the grapes, but puts them whole in the fermentation vat. He works towards a big, textured, velvety feel in the mouth, but respects the terroir and doesn’t want to just make a “Stephane Derenoncourt” wine, but one that has a distinct personality that reflects its origin.
When Derenoncourt takes on a wine, it’s a commitment on the part of the owner to take orders from Derenoncourt and the end result is always a wine with an major edge over most other wines in its class. That’s a given. These are the wines I look for. Try some Beausejour. There’s some very good wine in that bottle.
Chateau Beausejour Label
Chateau Beausejour, Montagne St Emilion 2005 , 12 btle case $219 ($18.25)
Noteworthy; Cora Pearl (Emma Elizabeth Crouch) famous courtesan 19th century is my great aunt, once owner of Chateau Beausejour St Emilion now split now as C B Becot....Daffu. it was given to her by Prince Napoleon.
She is daughter of Prof. FWN Crouch famous musician/author of such, "Kathleen Mavourneen",
Posted by: Frederick W N Crouch V | March 01, 2009 at 04:59 PM