France’s 50 best winemakers: Bruno Borie of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou
Owner and winemaker of his renowned family estate in Saint-Julien: “Our work is closer to rugby than to any other sport”.
The 24th interview in Le Figaro Vin’s series brings us back to Bordeaux to meet Bruno Borie, #27. As owner and team captain of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Deuxième Grand Cru Classé de Saint-Julien, he has been picking up exceptional critics’ scores for the past 20 years.
The history of this iconic Saint-Julien property goes back to the 17th century. In 1795, one Bernard Ducru set his heart on the estate, and it was he who added his family name to that of Beaucaillou, which derives its name from its terroir; a terroir made up of gravel dating from the Quaternary ice age, washed up by the rivers that flow into the Gironde estuary. Ranked as a second growth by the official Napoleonic classification of 1855, Ducru-Beaucaillou was acquired by the Borie family in 1941. Today, with a range of five different wines, the Château, led by Bruno Borie, enjoys a global following and a strong position in the rankings of the best 100 wines in the world. Next year Ducru-Beaucaillou is due to open a new cellar of 8,000 square metres.
Le Figaro Vin: How does it feel to be crowned a winemaking champion?
Bruno Borie: It’s a pleasant surprise for me but also for our team here at Ducru-Beaucaillou. It means something for our vineyards. I have a whole team around me, and they are kind enough to follow me, to support me in my dreams, or rather our dreams, since we live them together. It is a motivation to carry on, to push even further.
Have you been training for long?
I believe that estates like Château Ducru-Beaucaillou were conceived from the outset with the notion of creating the best wines in the world. “Everything has to change for everything to stay the same,” as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote in The Leopard. For our part, we can trace our winemaking roots back to 1720. These origins are evidenced by a marriage contract, but if there was a marriage contract that included the vineyard and the house as dowry, then it must follow that they were already in existence. So we believe that our roots go back at least as far as the end of the 17th century. And there has always been this desire to do things correctly, to excel. 1720 takes us back to the time of Montesquieu, who went off to sell his wine in England.
So that makes three centuries of training?
I am the beneficiary of the training of all my predecessors, and we continue to run along the same lines. What has really astonished me, in delving into our history, is that we have always been asking ourselves the same questions. To pick up on the sporting analogy, when we watched Toulouse and La Rochelle play that magnificent final, we could see that rugby has changed but also that it hasn’t changed. True, the players are more athletic, more muscular, and more powerful than ever but, at the same time, the spirit remains the same. There is a good case for saying that our work is closer to rugby than to any other sport.
Who has been your best mentor?
I am passionate about, captivated by the work and the achievements of Léa Vicens, who is the greatest female bullfighter of all time. She is a young woman who, purely through sheer hard work, purely through her will, her ambition, and her personal strength, has got to that level. She is an inspiration. Indeed, what do you do when you fall off your horse? You have to get back on it and back into the fight. There is another mentor that I have never had the chance to meet, namely the chef Guy Savoy, a former rugby player. When he lost a Michelin star, he took it on the chin and two days later he gathered his team around him and said: “We are going to go again. We are going to sort out what wasn’t working and rebuild our whole process from scratch. We are going to remotivate ourselves and search for the inner strength to win back what we have lost.” Those are great examples to follow since we are all, in a way, engaged in a form of sport.
Is wine a team sport?
I certainly think so.
And what is the key to making a good wine? The terroir or the human being?
The terroir, which we might also describe as an ecosystem. I, personally, favour the concept of the ecosystem because “terroir” is perhaps not always fully understood. The ecosystem is not only the geography, geology, climatology, and all the elements that we consider part of it…it is also the human being and his capacity to influence and enhance the ecosystem, his capacity to support nature. All that is encapsulated in a holistic approach. It is a comprehensive project in which man plays an integral part.
To what do you owe your success and the success of Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou?
I owe it both to all those who have gone before me and to all those who support me now. But my predecessors count for a lot.
Who are your biggest supporters?
We do have some, but that’s possibly where I most need to focus. We have people who understand us, who support us, and who are very loyal. But supporters in the sense of sponsors are necessarily the people who distribute and promote our wine. Admittedly we were very flattered, just the other day, to host the world’s best sommelier along with other truly remarkable sommeliers. I think that my 20thanniversary here, together with the 21st vintage I will have overseen, gives us the opportunity to make a big splash and attract other sponsors.
Your favourite colour?
It has to be the imperial yellow of Beaucaillou. It is beautiful because it has so many stories to tell. The historian Michel Pastoureau takes a very dim view of yellow, because for him it evokes the yellow star and the yellow gown of Judas. But for me there are other yellows that spring to mind. Yellow is for the postal service; it represents communication with the world. Yellow is the colour of the Orient, the colour of the Chinese Emperor, and it carries you into the mysteries of China. Yellow is magnificent and it’s my favourite colour.
And your favourite vintage?
It’s really hard to pick my favourite vintage because I am torn between my first and my latest, 2003 and 2022. That is fortuitous because they are both great vintages. 2003 was nevertheless a wine produced in tricky conditions, which heralded climate change. It provided a testing bed and the opportunity for me to assert my own ideas in respect of practices such as leaf stripping the vines. 20 years later I feel completely vindicated by the results, because the vines have stayed healthy and fresh. We have made a huge amount of progress since then. The 2003 is a lovely bottle of wine and, on top of that, it was the year that I met my wife. That makes two good reasons to choose it!
If your wine was a person, who would it be?
It is matched to its time. The 2010 brings to mind the very academic beauty of Charlize Theron. Whereas the 2022 strikes me as glamorous with a classical touch. For me it evokes the image of a voluminous red dress descending a staircase.