2023 Château Valandraud Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

After a 12-year career as a bank clerk, then a grocer and restaurateur in St. Emilion before ending up as a négociant wine merchant, Jean-Luc Thunevin plunged into the adventure of Ch. Valandraud. In 1989, he decided to make his own wine with his partner Murielle and found a terroir on the hill of Fongaban (the name Valandraud is a contraction of 'Vallon' and 'Andraud', the name of his partner). In 1990 he didn't have chais yet, so he bore the fruits to the cooperative.

In 1991, they made the wine in a workshop of their house, which they called the "garage", an old winemaking cellar belonging to the Bécot family. This is how the term 'garage wine' was born, all the more so that the chai was closed off like a garage. Because Thunevin did not have large resources (for example, he did not have an ontrister) the berries were picked by hand, which was already a good selection at the time, after all, bad berries were already excluded. He didn't have pumps either, so he had to manually pour the berries into the cuves. The principle of gravity was forced to become a fact here. After all, he did not have large cuves and was again forced to let malolactic fermentation take place in small barriques, a system that is now also very popular. All these fortuitous factors contributed to a beautiful wine that received rave press, and which, although the terroir was not known, was now classified as Premier Grand Cru Classé in the new classification of 2012.