Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another wonderful episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Ellis. Another interview underway at Barrel to Bottle. I'm really excited. We've gotten some great people so far. So I was downtown, and I just happened to run into Claire Villars-Lurton, you know? Just like, hey, girl, we got a coffee. It was great. No, she was in town to do a tasting. You know, just reading her name on paper, you just realize the gravitas, like the magnitude of who she is and who she represents in the wine industry. So her name, Claire Villars-Lurton, so the Lurton family, super famous family in the wine industry, of course, especially in Margot and Left Bank, Bordeaux. So she is married to Gunzog Lurton. We talk about that. And then basically her family, the Merlot family. She was just so full of energy and full of life and super fun to talk to, and I really just, I enjoyed my time. I mean, just super historical as a figure herself, and it was just an honor to sit down with somebody of such magnitude and that can touch so many different aspects of the wine world. Yeah, so sit back, relax, enjoy Claire Villars-Lurton. Okay, so I want to talk about just a little bit about your family background, because obviously without, if you know a little bit about wine, you read your first and last name hyphenated, and you go, okay, there's some heritage there. So I want to talk about the lineage of both yours and your husband's families, and then talk about family businesses a little bit, because they're kind of, for me, the cornerstone of the wine industry. So when did you get married? Is it Gonzague? Yes. When did you marry Gonzague? So I met my husband, I met Gonzague in 1993, and we got married in 1994. So it was very, yeah, it was nearly 25 years ago. So you met him and were like, okay. Yeah, I think he was more sure than me, but I will say, yeah, it's funny now because we have, of course, our two families are important in the wine business. Yeah. But my grandfather didn't know, my father-in-law, they just heard about them, they called them, sometimes they spoke together by phone, but they never met together. So your grandfather's name, just for the- Yeah. So my family, it's Merlot as a variety, but we are more in the Cabernet Sauvignon. So my grandfather, Merlot, Jacques Merlot, in the 70s bought a lot of chateaus at this period of time. Everything was so cheap. It was a white merchant at the beginning. Okay. So we bought many chateaus, and my mother was running all these chateaus, but my parents had an accident in the mountain in December 92. So I had to succeed to my mother. So I was a student in Paris, and I came back to Bordeaux to run the chateaus. Oh, that had to be a shock for you. Yeah, of course. It was a big shock. How old were you at the time? Sorry? How old were you? 24. Okay. Okay. So I was not a baby. Yeah, but still to come back and have to take over everything, you know, at that age, it's still very young. Yeah. I had a wonderful grandfather who was so helpful. And at the same time, it's very funny because Gonzague family, it's Lucien Lurton. So Lucien Lurton, they have a lot of chateaus too. Gonzague has nine brothers and sisters, and my father-in-law, inherited of Brian Cantona, but worked a lot to buy some chateaus in the 60s, 70s when nobody wanted it. It was so difficult to earn money with that. It was a big loss of money. So he bought a lot of chateaus and he gave one chateau per children. And in 1992, he said, Bye-bye, I travel all over the world during one year and you have to manage yourself, your vineyards. So he stopped his study too and start to in the wine business in the Dior Far Vivans. So he had a very similar sort of jump in the deep end of the pool. And we met at this time. So you're at the helm of your family's estates and he's got his estate plus his brothers have all of theirs and everyone's just trying to learn it all together. Absolutely. So we had plenty of points together. And my grandfather-in-law was so happy to meet my family-in-law. And it was so easy. But we always worked separately, you know? Because in my family, my uncle run Chateau Gruyau-La-Rose, my sister Chateau Chasse-Pline, Chateau Camasac with my uncle. I own Chateau Ferrières, Chateau Au-Bage-Libéral, Chateau La-Gurge. So, but we always worked separately. And my husband also, with Dur Fort-Vivaince, you know, the two families didn't like that we put the things together, you know? It's an heritage, a family heritage. So, we always work in our own business. And after 20 years, we wanted to find something and to make something together, and to have a vignette together, not in France. So, we bought a very nice place in 2012 in Sonoma. Okay. Because that was a way to make a clean break, to start something that either his family nor your family could be like, you know, I understand, could be a bit of jealousies and this and that, because between the two of you, gosh, you own so much. So, I can see why. If things get incorporated, that they want to have it separate. So, what a great story then for you guys to say, fine. Yes. We'll keep it this way here, but we're going to go elsewhere and do our thing. Yeah. And we are in a busy, you know, with our own business. So, but now after 20 years, we have three children and after 20 years, we realized that we could very well work together. So, now we have some people who work for Gonzague and for me in Bordeaux, you know, for Durfort, for Ferrières, for Aubage. So, we make a mutualization, is it okay? What is it? Mutualization. Yeah. So, more and more. Oh, great. And now all the chateaus are to our children. So, you know, it's a... No, but you know, we are so lucky, unfortunate when you realize of beautiful chateaus. You know, they can make profits. We are very focused on the biodynamic organically. We are more in the building of the brand not to make money. You know, we just want to invest. We invest all that we earn. But it's beautiful. You know, there is only 61 Grand Cru Classez in Bottle. We have three of them. So I will say, because we have a strong label and strong wines, it's easy to keep it. Yeah. And in Sonoma, of course, Candel Jackson is buying everything, which is good. And of course, there is a lot of mondialization, consolidation. And the first time we went there, we met many people because they were, because we are looking for buying something. And many guys we met, we said, why do you sell? And they said, oh, because I want my money. And I said, you have children? Oh, yes, but they are doing other things, you know. They just want to have their money back. And in France, at this time, it's not in the mentality. We are very close to the land, you know, we need to have land. When we went in California, the people said, just buy a branch, and you custom crush, and you make money with no invest. So it's a lot easier than if you buy land. And we say, but we don't know how to do that. You know, we are not making money. We are just making something that we love. And so we invested in the vineyard, we invested in a good time, because it was in 2012. So we built beautiful facilities, wineries. And so we don't know how to make, in another way, than the transmission, you know. It's heavy to inirritate, you know. I was 24 when I inirritate of everything. So it's heavy because you need, you want to be better than your parents, you know. When you own by yourself, if you lose it, you don't mind, it's you. When it's inirritate, it's heavy. So I understand people who don't want to carry that, you know. They want to get rid of that because it's too much. Yeah, it's too much. But in my education, I always worked with, my parents was working a lot, we work a lot, but it's a patient. So this generation, hopefully, they, I'm sure they will be in the one business, and I hope that they need to develop to be able to transmit to the children, in the only way. So you think that, your children understand the gravitas of the history that they're taking? Yeah, I'm sure, yes. And you think that maybe with the consolidation, maybe if we're just speaking of US wineries, they kind of just want to sell the brand and get their investment or their products. Oh, they love the place. Yeah, we're in a so beautiful place, so now we have to develop, we have to develop. It's only very difficult because we are in a mountain vineyard and the most of the beautiful place at this time, Candle Jackson, buy everything. So it's very difficult for us. We are so small to develop, but we are in the way of development, you know. We are not in the way of thinking of selling, but just in the development for our children or grandchildren to be able to do the same, you know. Yes, yes. And how big is the place? How many acres did you buy? Oh, it's very small. We have 24 acres, but we want to make a very cute wine, you know. We want to make a very good wine for Sonoma. So we produce only 1,000 or 1,500 cases of Acaibo, which is our flagship. And after we do the wines. And we are as Bordeaux, we are in organic. Bordeaux, we are in bio-dynamics. So we were the first. So you know, we need to... That's difficult to do in the climate, in a maritime climate like Bordeaux. Yeah, compared to California, no link. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have so much more humidity. Humidity, as a lot of people know, is the biggest threat to biodynamic and organic farming because of the molds and the rots, et cetera. So when did you decide to go biodynamic and when did it happen? So when we had enough staff. 2007, the first trials, and since 2012, all the vineyards are in full biodynamic. Okay. So from 7 to 12? Yeah. We did trials and more and more. But everybody said, oh, we are inorganic, but nobody was, it has a lot of marketing behind that. So we decided with Gonzague to go with the certification. Okay. So you are Demeter certified since 2012. No, we started 2012. So me, I started with Biodivin. Biodivin is a French So we are organic since 2015 with Ferriere. And I asked Demeter just last year, but it's just one year, but Biodivin is seven years. So I will be a Biodivin in 18. And Gonzague will be a Demeter and organic in 16. So I was the first one, you know, and Obage will be Demeter and organic in 17. Demeter is quite tough because you don't have to, especially for the fermentation, you are not allowed to buy some yeast, market some yeast, you need to prepare your own yeast, your own starter. And there is plenty of things that in fact, we need to manage it very well in the wine. In the vineyards, you know, after 10 years, we don't have a problem. We used to do that, you know, it's very good. But in the wine, you are not allowed to use any entrance. So you can use sulfite, hopefully. But now, our aim is to reduce the sulfite lower than the Demeter husk. Okay. So this was a very bad frost in April, right after en premier as well. So it was quite nice. It seemed very nice, like the year was going to turn out, at least start out very well and then just kind of disseminated. So did you lose anything? No. Me, fortunately, I didn't lose any grapes in Au Bage Libéral, and a little bit in Ferrières, just a block of Merlot. So was it worse down in Margot than it was up in Pauillac? Because Margot, Pauillac was not completely safe, but all the vignettes which are regarding the river had no frost. Yes. So La Tour, Au Bage Libéral, Pichon. It still lost like 80 or 90 percent. No, but some people didn't have it, you know. And it was a very unfair frost because it touched most of the small vignettes, you know. The big vignettes which are at the top, close to the river or at the top of the hill didn't frost. So I would say the healthy people didn't suffer, and the small chateaus of the lot, which is the Petit Chateau, and it's very difficult for them. So people are really, we're really doing bad last year. So how is it shaping up for this year? Oh, but at this time, you know, we had a very late spring because we had a very wet winter. Oh my God, it was raining every day. And so at this time, we didn't start to flower, but we see that the vines is so, we had so many water in the soil and now it's very sunny, it's hot, it's growing so fast, we have to run after. Yeah. And because we have to do a lot of things in the vineyard, you know, when it's growing, you have to move the wires, you have to take out all the bad buds, you have to take out all the small, you know, les pomprages. There is many, many work in the vineyard that is only by hand. So we are running and... Everything you do is by hand for the most part. Yes. Yeah. Especially the work when you work with the soil, when you chill, you chill, but we try to chill as less as we can. We seed at the autumn. For the cover crop. For the cover crop. But it's a special cover crop to help us. And at the spring, because here, in Sonoma, you can plant cover crop in the autumn, and it's growing during the winter. Because it's very Mediterranean weather, because it's hot the winter. In Bordeaux, nothing is growing in the winter. It's too cold. But it's growing at the spring, and after we don't chill it, we just... Well, we fold it, just for... Introduce oxygen. Yeah. And with all the roots to give a lot of life in the soil, et cetera, and it's very... So it's a lot of work, and we till underneath the plants, you know? Okay. And we spray by tractor, but all the rest is by hand. Okay. That's a lot of work. Yeah. And we have 10,000 plants per hectare. Oh, wow. So how did you go about choosing your clones for California? We chose the French clones. Yeah. Only French clones. Were you able to take from your properties? No, absolutely. Because you didn't have enough time. You would have needed like 10 years. 10 years. Yeah. No, but we have a lot of nurseries, French nurseries, who work La Rue, Guillaume, who work in California. You know, it's a big business for them. And we are very focused on the French clones because Californian clones, it's very interesting by itself, but it's not the wine that we want to make. It's usually very strong in alcohol, very strong in tannins. In French clones, it's more elegant, more focused on the quality of the tannins. So the first thing is to move back with French clones. Half of the vineyard was French clones already. And so we started to work with a French company, but they are in Auckland, so they are very now very well known, to install some set flow, some measurement of the set, to see one measurement every day, to see how the set is moving. So we know that at a certain time, a certain point, we are in stress. Most of the time, people irrigate before the stress because we see that the leaves are collapsing, that the vines suffer, but sometimes the roots are enough strong to find water in the soil. And many times with my husband, we said, oh, the stress is very close, perhaps tomorrow we have to irrigate. And we saw the liver going up, and I asked, did you irrigate? He said, no, just the vines could find the water. And in this way, we just irrigate one time, sometimes twice a year. And... So not total dry farming, but... Total dry farming can be a little tough because it was irrigated all the time before. So the roots was so shallow. Now it's going back. And they, both the roots grow down, but then they begin to grow up. Yeah. Because they don't have to go... Absolutely. So when we pull out half of the vignette, all the roots were completely shallow. You know, like that. Now, unless you irrigate, less you have to irrigate. We could be able to not irrigate at all. And so the result is that we don't rise too much the sugar and we have early phenolic maturity a lot. More you irrigate, less your tannins are ripe. Because you know, the water is going in the leaves, in the strength of the vines, and not in the focus in the fruit. And inorganic also, we are earlier, you know, because earlier we can harvest with lower degrees. Isn't it fun what you have to do differently? Yeah, it's so funny. And the fermentation is so different. In Bordeaux, we do traditional fermentation. We work with Eric Boiseneau. And so we do very classical fermentation. We start the fermentation as soon as the fruit are coming with the starter that we produce ourselves. And then we don't reach more than 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 75, 78. And then when the sugar is finished, we keep on skin during two weeks, sometimes three weeks. And we separate the juice and the skin, and we work a lot on the press. We select the press in function of the quality, because the wine was not so much extracted. So the press wine is... It helps a little. Yeah, it has the structure of the wine. It's so useful because it's so fat, and we have a very good press wine. We have the state of the art in terms of press wine. So in California, we work a lot with the press, too, but we do cold-soak because usually we have not... The seeds are not as ripe as Bottle. So we don't want to have the contact with the seeds, which can give you a lot of bitterness. So usually we do cold-soak during four or five days, and we are under 45, and the juice is so black. A lot of people, our listeners would probably want to know that the cold-soak will extract color, but not a whole lot of tannins. And especially the bad tannins. And not the bitterness from the seeds as well, as long as it's not too hot. More you have alcohol, more the bitterness of the seeds is coming. Exactly. And usually we start the fermentation, 78, 80, not more. But after, we separate the juice and the skin before the end of the sugar. Oh, really? When the alcohol is become too strong, we prefer to separate it because we have enough tannins. It's so dense. We don't want the bad tannins of the seeds. So it's almost like, not like you're making a rosé, but the wine making is almost similar in the sense that you pull the wine off the skins and you finish the fermentation without it. That's very cool. Well, usually it's just four or five grams, you know, it's just the hands. But how many days does that take, that four or five grams? Oh, two or three days. And especially when you take out the skins, it's going very fast. And it's very funny. And in California, we have a lot of small tanks, but most of the Malolactics are in Barrel, in Bordeaux, in Ferrier and Aubage, everything is in a tank. The Malolactics. And we put the wine after, but we have more. In Aubage Liberale, we produce 10,000 cases, and in Acai Boots, it's only 1,500 cases. It's just so much less. Yeah, it's a small tank. That's awesome. You seem very, very happy to be able to do that project in Sonoma. Oh yeah, it's lovely. It's lovely to change and to discover another world. And working with your husband, out in the open and clear, and nobody to tell you anything different. That's great. You seem very excited about your California venture. It's like your other little baby, your fourth child. Yes, absolutely. Do you have a dog in California? No, I have a cat. I have a cat. Oh no. No, why do you have a dog in California? Because we are not there enough. Dogs need the human. We wanted, because a promise for the children to move to California, we will have a dog. And because we have a pound, so we wanted a dog who can protect the children against the pound, because our last one was three years old, so he was not a good swimmer. So, but after we realized that we couldn't bring him back each time we moved, and the dog will be so unhappy with no human. So we decided to have a cat. Okay, that works, because the cat can take care of himself. And I have some shit in the aubergine barrel. I have some chicken. I have plenty of animals. You know, I love that. Okay, yeah. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. It was a pleasure to speak with you. You have a lot of energy, so it's very fun to speak to you. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. So there you have it, folks. That was my interview with Claire Villars-Lurton of pretty much every chateau under the sun in Bordeaux. Kidding, but really quite a prolific lineup between families. What a great insight into family businesses, into working not only in France, but California. A super interesting woman. Let's get to the customer queue, man. Okay. With me today is Greg Versch. What up? How are you doing today? We've got a question from Laura Heisel at the Wine Expo. We took questions and she asked, why is Rioja from Spain less likely to give me a hangover than Cabernet Sauvignon? Now, the hangover question, we get this often. Why does this and that give me a headache? Why do some wines give me a hangover or not? She brings up Cabernet Sauvignon. I'm going to assume a couple of things about our friend Laura, that she's drinking more domestic, warmer climate, bigger, fuller, richer Cabernet Sauvignon than maybe Bordeaux. Because what we're talking about here are wines that have normally less alcohol to them. New world stuff, warm climate stuff. New world, warm climate wines are going to have most 99.9% of the time, because of where they're from, higher alcohol content. They're heavier, they're more extracted, and they generally have a little bit more residual sugar to them. And they come from a culture where that's just kind of the typical wine that's made. Well, isn't that just the style? But that's making wine in that particular part of the world. It's sunny, it's hot, and the riper the grapes get, the more alcohol is going to be in the glass. So you've got a lot of dry extract, you've got a lot of alcohol, a lot of tannin. Tannin dries you out. So if you're drinking high octane, full throttle Cabernet from California, it's going to have more of those averse effects on you the next day versus a lower alcohol wine, say from Yoja or from Bordeaux. So let's just take Cabernet. Cabernet from California is going to get you more hung over quicker than Cabernet from a cooler area that has less alcohol in it. Alcohol. So a lot of people come in and they say, oh, I think it's the tannins or I think it's the sulfites. Well, the sulfite thing is just silly. We just need to stop that. Sulfites could never and will never give you a headache. Unless you have that asthma and then the headache is probably part of something else. But that's not the reaction. If you have a sulfitic allergy, you have an asthma attack. It manifests in its lungs, in one's lungs. And if you have that asthma or whatever, you absolutely know it because you can't eat fruit. You can't have a single raisin. There's more sulfites in a raisin than a whole bottle of red wine. Can't drink lemonade or orange juice. You can't drink conventional anything. You couldn't eat conventional anything. I mean, you couldn't have a dried apricot. You couldn't have any of that stuff. You couldn't have white wines. People say, oh, it's the sulfites in red. Well, red wine has antioxidants via the color and the tannin. So white wines are made by and large with a lot more sulfites added to them. Listen, sulfites have been used for hundreds of years. They're super traditional. So sulfite additions in the winemaking process are traditional additions. It is traditional winemaking. Sure. So when it comes to headaches, you're saying alcohol dehydrates you, tannins dehydrate you, and enough of that, you're just going to wake up dehydrated plus alcohol. Plus alcohol. That's just it. You can really process your liver about an ounce of alcohol per hour. So if you've exceeded that, then you're going to be hung over. And also once you exceed whatever that threshold is for your body, your maximum limit to be drunk, right? Like once you cross the drunk threshold, you're going to be hung over no matter what. Because your liver can only process so much. And then if you're adding in things like sweet wine, so if you're drinking a high ABV sweet wine, like let's say Port for example, which should be the biggest, the most extreme example I can give you, then you're going to be super hung over because That's certainly true for beers when you get Belgian Triple or Quad. Not only are they super high in alcohol, but then they're also pumping you full of sugar. You wake up at 2 in the morning, you feel like you just drank an energy drink. You're completely dehydrated and can't get enough sleep and you're full of sugars and alcohol. Right. The reason, Laura, you're less hung over with wines from Spain is on a whole, they're lower in alcohol than maybe some of the New World cabs you're drinking. Don't really cross anything over 13.5 percent. Drink a little extra water. Yeah, that's it. Just drink water, dude. Go to bed instead of staying up until 2. Drink water, man. That's the biggest thing. It's like in between every drink, drink water. So thanks, Laura, for writing in your question to Barrel, The Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We have a $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. For your chance to win a $20 gift card to any Binny's Beverage Depot location, write us at Binny's Bev on Twitter and we'll read your question and we'll do our best to answer it. Thanks for listening to Barrel, To Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this interview and Q&A portion with Greg and I. We appreciate your time and keep tasting.