Ukrainian magazine Sommelier
We are Sophie and Philip Holzberg, French and Canadian respectively.
The following is the English-language translation of an interview in Sommelier magazine, Moscow, in the July 2003 issue, which tells the whole story of how Chateau Franc-Cardinal came about.
Q: Mr. Holzberg, I understand that you are Canadian, and yet here you are a grape-grower and wine-maker in France. Can you tell us how that came about?
A: I began my working career in the restaurant business in Toronto (where I was born) in the early 1970's. That is where I "discovered" wine, and I quickly found that I liked that part of the business at least as much as I did the food! I continued to explore this path, and in 1977 committed my life to it, with the intention of moving to France and one day making my own. The intervening years were spent acquiring the skills necessary to do so, and in 1990 I moved to France, and bought my first vineyard, in Burgundy, in late 1994.
I have to this day Domaine de Clivet, "the smallest domaine in Burgundy", with 0.53 hectares under vine, and an annual production of about 200 cases per year. We are honoured that a small portion of this comes to Russia and Ukraine each year. However my wife, Sophie, is from the Southwest of France (Cognac, to be precise), and preferred to remain there. It is true that this region has the best of all possible worlds: an excellent climate, close to the sea, lovely countryside - and some of the best wines in the world! So we decided to look for a larger property in the Bordeaux area where we could move the family to, raise our children in a healthy environment, spend more time with them, and fully realise my dream. After much search, we found this property in Chateau Franc-Cardinal, in Tayac, AOC Bordeaux Cotes de Francs, a little east of the St. Emilion area.
Q: What was it about this property that made you decide to buy it?
A: I believe very strongly in the notion of terroir, the unique combination of soil and microclimate which gives the special character to each wine. Unlike the philosophy of wine producers in the New World (Australia, California, etc.), where they give technology the upper hand in trying to create a product of consistent style - a manufactured product, if you will - in the Old World we believe that it is man's role to discern the character inherent in the terroir and coax it out, helping it to achieve its full potential - much in the way you raise a child. But the potential has to be there in the first place. When we found Chateau Franc-Cardinal, I was so enchanted by what I smelled in the glass, i.e. by the wines already being produced, that basically I bought it on the spot! And you have to know that we had looked at dozens of properties over perhaps six years, so if I was that enchanted, it was for a reason. In fact, you could almost say I was seduced! It definitely showed remarkable terroir.
Q: Can you tell us then a little about your vineyards, and why they have this terroir?
A: We have ten hectares in total, in three separate parcels roughly two kilometres apart. While all three have a similar clay-and-limestone soil, these do vary slightly, which when blended together, add complexity to the wine. The vineyards are on gently rolling terrain, well exposed (i.e., south-southwest), and well drained. This kind of soil is ideal for Merlot and Cabernet Franc, to which the vineyard is planted in roughly a 75:25% split. The Merlot gives body and mouth-filling flavour; the Cabernet Franc terrific elegance and finesse. You might, by the way, like to know that we call Cabernet Franc "Bouchet" locally, to distinguish it from Cabernet Sauvignon. In spite of what you may have heard, the two are not cousins at all, and have totally different styles. We grow no Cabernet Sauvignon on the property as it requires a totally different soil from ours (it needs gravely soil), so once again you see that the vine, as well as the winemaking, must be adapted to its terroir!
Q.: And then how does one "coax" the character out of this terroir?
A.: Well, there are basically three phases: the work in the vineyard; the vinification (i.e., the transformation of the fruit into wine), and "elevage", or "raising" this young, new wine. Each phase is crucial to the final outcome, and each requires different skills. As per the vineyard, while the terroir doesn't change, the weather each year does, and in France we are not allowed to compensate by watering the vine, for example, as one can in most other countries. We must work with what nature gives us each year! This is what accounts for the special characteristics of each vintage, which we consider one of the richnesses of our wines. Work in the vineyard goes on twelve months of the year, and we are in there virtually every day, following the year's evolution. We only intervene when necessary for the quality.
Q.: You say you can't water the vines; what kind of intervention can you do?
Well, for example, if the flowering was particularly successful and so the crop looks very bountiful, we will thin the bunches in late July, discarding some in order to allow the ones we leave to attain greater ripeness and fuller flavour. We actually throw away some of our precious crop in order to have a smaller, but better one. You can't have quality and quantity at the same time! We likewise sort through the crop when it is picked, discarding any bunches which are not in perfect condition so that only the best go into the fermentation vats. The quality of the crop is of course the first determinant of the quality of the wine.
Q.: And then?
Next comes the vinification. You might be surprised to learn that wine is a totally natural product, that everything necessary to transform grapes into wine is present naturally in the crop. The role of man here, too, is to simply guide this natural process, and help steer it in the right direction for quality.
Q.: How does this work?
A.: Grapes become wine via fermentation. This is as I said a totally natural process: As the grapes ripen, a "bloom" of yeast cells develops on the skins, and when the bunches arrive at the chai we remove the stems (as these, if left in, give harsh tannins which we do not want in the wine) and crush the grapes, putting the resulting skins-and-juice mixture into open-topped fermentation vats. After about two days the yeasts begin to "eat" the sugar in the grapes, and "excrete" as a by-product, alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide bubbles up to the top of the vats, and the level of sugar declines and the alcohol increases until the process is complete, i.e. there is no more sugar for the yeast to "eat". The yeast then dies, and falls to the bottom of the vat as a sediment, which we can then get rid of.
Q.: And how do you "guide" this for quality?
A.: We could just leave it alone to complete this natural process on its own, but the resulting wine would be "thin", i.e., light in colour and flavour. This is because the colouring material, the tannins and most of the flavour are present in the grape skins, not in the juice! And since the skins are carried up to the surface of the vat by the force of the rising carbon dioxide, we must continually re-mix them into the juice in order to get what we call an optimum "extraction" of these flavours, colour and tannins. We do this by "pumping over" the wine, from the bottom of the tank onto the skins at the top, twice a day during fermentation. Second, the young wine is very fragile, and prone to oxidation (which kills the fruit flavour and turns the wine brown) if in contact with the oxygen in the air. During fermentation it is protected by the layer of carbon dioxide which has risen out of the wine, filling the rest of the vat above the wine. But as soon as fermentation is over we must be very vigilant, and immediately run off the new wine into other, closed vats. We then remove the grape skins and press them lightly, in order to remove the wine that remains. This wine is very rich in flavour and tannins, and we mix this "press wine" back into the "free-run wine" which we had just removed, in order to have a wine which is complete. But it is now just a baby. It is time for us to "raise" it.
Q: But it is now just a baby. It is time for us to "raise" it.
Q: This then is "elevage" ?
A: Yes, elevage is literally the raising of the wine, again, as you do with a child. We do this by transferring it into carefully-selected, small, French-oak barrels, where it ages, softening the aggressive tannins of the young wine, softening it in general in fact, and developing a silky texture that cannot otherwise be attained. Furthermore, we ferment and then age the wine from each of our three parcels of vineyard separately, and the Bouchet, or Cabernet Franc, separately again. So in fact, we have four young wines to "raise" each year! And we do this in seven different kinds of French oak barrels, which in fact gives us 28 different young-wine - barrel combinations, each evolving in a subtly different direction. When the ageing is completed we blend it all together to make only one final Chateau Franc-Cardinal wine, but allowing them to develop separately first, gives in the end a blend of much greater complexity of flavours. We then bottle it all here at the Chateau (thus giving a Chateau-bottled wine, an important distinction, and a guarantee of origin), and THEN age it a further year in bottle before release. This important step of bottle-ageing allows the flavours to marry and become a harmonious whole, ready to drink. But I stress once again that what we are doing is helping to give full expression to the potential of the wine, inherent in its terroir. We work in service of the wine, in a sense, and not vice-versa.
Q: How then would you describe the wines of Chateau Franc-Cardinal?
A: Our terroir, as interpreted by the two grapes varieties we grow here (Merlot and Cabernet Franc), gives wines of a basic red-fruit character (such as cherry flavours) with a silky texture due to the subtle wood-ageing. There is very often (depending on the vintage), an intriguing, mouth-watering bitter note in the finish (like bitter cherries), and the tannins are always soft and well-integrated. I consider the wines elegant and perfumed. We release them after one year of bottle-ageing so that they can be drunk right away, but they definitely benefit from further ageing. While they will last longer and continue to develop, I personally feel that they are at their peak after five years. Source
