Margaux Focus 1: Château Durfort-Vivens

I keep abreast of the toing and froing of most major Bordeaux châteaux. Nevertheless, some estates inadvertently fall off my radar. One of those was Durfort-Vivens. Following a series of perplexing showings in blind tastings, with all the criticism that generates, combined with the estate’s eschewal of organized tastings, the Margaux estate became one that I would simply drive past en route to somewhere else. An improvement in quality in recent years urged me to schedule an appointment seeking to learn about proprietor Gonzague Lurton’s modus operandi. Then a private dinner a week later shed light upon older vintages. Lurton completed the picture with comprehensive and insightful answers to further questions, and hey presto, I had the article you are reading. HISTORY Considering Durfort-Vivens is a fully-fledged second growth, its background is full of missing reels. According to early editions of Féret, the Durfort de Duras family owned the estate. When it was acquired by Mon. de Vivens in 1824, he duly appended his name, and the estate was classified a Second Growth in the 1855 Classification, which, lest we forget, makes it one rung higher than Château Palmer to this day. The estate passed to his niece, who married one Mon. Puységur and, in turn, sold it in 1866 to Mon. G. Richier and de la Mare. Given its status, it is strange that the estate became something of a hot potato, passing in quick succession from one family to another. After a short period when it was owned by Mme. F. Beaucourt et Delmée, in 1895, the 48-hectares château was sold to a négociant, Gabriel Delor. At this point, I hand it over to Gonzague Lurton, who replied to my questions so comprehensively that I reproduced them almost verbatim as a Q&A. Neal Martin: Can you just confirm: Lucien Lurton, your father, bought the estate in 1961? What condition was it in? I read that the wine was actually vinified at Brane-Cantenac until 1995. Gonzague Lurton: Yes, Pierre Ginestet called my father in 1961 as he wanted to recover part of his investment. The Ginestet and the Lurton family knew each other well as my great grandfather, Léonce Récapet, who bought Brane-Cantenac in 1928, was also the main shareholder of Château Margaux at the time. Following his death in 1944, his son François Lurton, my grandfather, accepted an offer from the Ginestet family to exchange his shares in Château Margaux (50%) for Clos Fourtet in Saint-Émilion. My father, who only had one share, didn’t want to let it go but was obliged to do so under pressure. Château Durfort-Vivens was acquired by Château Margaux in 1937, and so my family, and in particular my father, knew the property well. From 1937, most probably for economic reasons, the production of Durfort-Vivens was done entirely at Château Margaux. When my father took over Durfort-Vivens in 1961, vinification was transferred to Château Brane-Cantenac. You have to place yourself in the context of the time when there were very little means. You had to make savings where possible. It is indeed difficult to imagine today that at that time, the owner of Château Margaux needed money and had to resolve to sell Durfort-Vivens. The first thing my father did was to rehabilitate the aging cellar, and in the 1970s, the barrel aging was carried out at Durfort-Vivens. At the same time, he also installed a vat room with twelve 100-hectoliter steel vats, which were still there when I took over in 1992. I vinified part of the 1992, 1993 and 1994 vintages at Durfort-Vivens and the rest at Brane-Cantenac. In 1995, I had a new vat room built and installed stainless steel vats. Once again, I was able to vinify Durfort-Vivens entirely at the château, probably for the first time since 1937. [Post-script: Lucien Lurton passed away after this article was written in March 2023 with an inning of 98, leaving a huge legacy.] NM: How did you feel when you were given Durfort-Vivens to run? GL: I was very excited as Durfort was the property I wanted. I didn’t have any agricultural or winemaking qualifications. I had studied business and was working in a bank when my father decided to stop and hand over the reins. We were ten children, and in 1992, my father divided his properties into ten lots of equivalent worth. He showed them to us and said: “Now make your wishes. Write your three choices on a piece of paper.” On the paper I gave him, there was only one choice, Durfort-Vivens. I got my wish. During those first years, we, brothers and sisters, worked together as a collective. Everyone had a different skill set, and we helped each other before gradually becoming independent. I made the most of those first years by taking a training course at the faculty of oenology. THE VINEYARD The 55-hectare vineyard comprises 81.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.7% Merlot and 3.7% Cabernet Franc, though the Grand Vin can contain even higher percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon. For example, the 2016 was composed of 94%. This is higher than other Margaux estates. NM: Can you give me information on viticulture, e.g. rootstock, pruning methods, green harvesting or de-leafing etc.? GL: Regarding planting, we still mainly follow a classic policy of clonal selection on 101-14 grafted rootstock. Our experience with Riparia shows the difficulty in adapting to drought conditions in our very light clay soil; 3309 is a little more vigorous and works very well. We have just done a trial of 110R in a sandier zone. We are also replacing dead vines of old Cabernet Sauvignon massal selection plots with non-grafted (francs de pied) massal selection vines from the same plot. It’s an experiment that we began five years ago. My father told me that phylloxera was not very active in our soil which contains little clay. We have launched a conservatory of old vines, recuperating them from vine growers digging up their old plots, with a view to re-using them in the future. We are involved in a trial of a re-introduction of old grape varieties by planting a few hundred vines of Castets, which could be better adapted to hot climates. We practice Médoc pruning, paying particular attention to the flow of sap (Simonit & Sirch) with trials of “taille douce” (Bourdarias). In terms of green harvesting/de-leafing, we favor, as much as possible, early management with the thinning of secondary shoots to lighten the load. De-leafing is not systematic. It depends on the plots, their vitality and the characteristics of the vintage. For example, we didn’t de-leaf at all in 2022, whereas in 2021, we de-leafed the young plots. NM: What was the first year that the entire vineyard was biodynamic? GL: We advanced in stages, but we soon felt that we were going in the right direction, the vines were responding positively, and our grapes were more expressive. After [the initial] 10 hectares in 2009, we rolled it out to 20 hectares in 2010, 30 hectares in 2011 and then 100% in 2012. To keep it simple, I would say that we have entered a cycle that allows for unification in terms of grape maturation. We no longer have the ripening of the fruit first and, a few days later, the ripening of the pips. This disparity explains the two conflicting schools that we knew in Bordeaux from the 1990s and 2000s. The Boissenot school [referring to consultant Eric Boissenot] harvested the freshly matured grapes working with delicacy to avoid bitterness, while the Rolland school waited for perfect polyphenolic maturity but at the price of over-ripened fruit. The grapes we have been harvesting for a few years now burst with juice and particularly soft pips. Two thousand fourteen is the first vintage where I think it is noticeable. NM: What sparked the interest in biodynamics? Was it a producer or a particular wine or something you had read about? Were you skeptical at first? GL: I grew up in Margaux, where we played childhood games in the park, in the streams and in the vines. I witnessed nature changing in the 1970s and 1980s with the disappearance of fish from the streams, beetles from the garden and wild leeks from the vines…My desire was to bring it all back, but I didn’t really know how to. I knew about organic agriculture, but the organic wines that I had tasted seemed rustic and didn’t correspond to the criteria of a Grand Cru, which in my opinion, should be the height of refinement. I discussed this with Alain Moueix in 2008, and he told me about Biodynamics which, he explained, not only created a link with the earth like organic agriculture but also an astral influence on the soil and gave the wines the verticality that I was looking for. He invited me to a Biodivin tasting at Château Fonroque in the spring of 2008, and what I tasted there convinced me that there was something to Biodynamics. Whether the wines were good or not, I found that verticality and that lasting mid-palate, which is, for me, the signature of a great wine. I was wary of the esoteric aspect of biodynamics. Certain winemakers seemed to have lost their way and produced wines with sensory defects. However, what did interest me was the pure expression of the terroir. I had a doubt about the feasibility of this search for purity in a biodynamic context, but the great Burgundies that had already embarked upon it convinced me that it was possible. So, I began with 10 hectares in 2009 with the help of Alain Moueix. Léopold Valentin, today’s technical director, arrived in 2010 with the mission of putting in place biodynamic practices on the property. --Neal Martin, Margaux Focus 1: Château Durfort-Vivens, August 2023 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To take a deeper look at the vineyard, vinification and Neal’s overall thoughts on the wines, check out the full article on Vinous now . Enjoy a few of Neal’s tasting notes below.