Valandraud Vertical Neal Martin, The Wine Advocate, March 1, 2017
Jean‐Luc Thunévin and I share a common past life: both former DJs, masters at the wheels of steel, dance‐floor in the palm of our hands, planning the next series of floor‐fillers like a chess grandmaster plotting his moves. Of course, we both moved on to different things. I took the needle off the record and delved into wine writing. Jean‐Luc became the eminence gris of the vi...
Château Valandraud Château Valandraud is a very famous ‘garage wine’ created by Jean-Luc Thunevin and his wife Murielle Andraud. Its first vintage was 1991. Having become highly successful wine merchants in the Saint-Emilion area, their burning ambition was to own their own vineyard and make their own wine. Little by little, they bought up several parcels of vines. The name of the growth is both geographical (Val for Vale of Fongaban) and sent...
Their policy is therefore to look after the vines, some thirty years old, with the same meticulous care always keeping to the authentic nature of things. Valandraud's cellarmaster, Rémi Dalmasso, explains: –Instead of adding something into the wine, we concentrate it. That is why minimal harvests and removing excess juice by the saignée method are more appropriate. On average, we remove 20 per cent of the juice before fermentation, and I once ...
Because garage wines do not often grow in the best possible land, the vineyards must work twice as hard as others to reach top quality. Valandraud's cultivations are scattered around Saint-Emilion, which means that the soils are significantly different. Winemaker Dalmasso says: –We have plenty of choice in the blending stage. Only 20–30 per cent of our wines go to Château Valandraud, and the rest to Virginie de Valandraud and 3 de Valandraud.
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