IYou have to face reality: journalists specializing in wine, of which I am one, are spoiled rotten people. During press events, we are taken for a walk, we are fed, our glasses are filled. We put our documents on small upholstered stools, we slip bottles into elegant little bags with ribbons. We live “in pasha mode”, to use the song of Astéréotypie, the most exciting French musical group of the moment. The circles of legs bore me, this feeling of being disconnected from reality annoys me; I therefore refuse most press lunches.
And yet, I had accepted this one. Because behind the polished appearance of Jacques Lurton, owner (among others) of the Château Couhins-Lurton, oozes the baroque, the personality out of the frame. And that these were new vintages, “different” I had been promised. The meeting took place at Monsieur Dior, kitchens led by Jean Imbert, on the first floor of the Dior boutique on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, a place where one feels dowdy and where one does not dare look at the price of a pair of socks (360 euros). It was going badly.
What a nice surprise, then. Instead of the bourgeois plan-plan lunch, I had the feeling, finally, of entering a new Bordeaux era. And above please. Couhins-Lurton has nothing rock’n’roll about it. Cru Classé de Graves, pessac-léognan appellation, south of Bordeaux, it was bought and renovated by André Lurton, the father of the current owner. André Lurton was one of the great figures of the Bordeaux vineyard. At the head of 600 hectares of vines, he was also the one who founded the pessac-léognan controlled designation of origin in 1987. This is the legacy that weighs on his son, on this château, on this wine.
” Another story “
And yet this new range, a red and a white, comes to shake everything up. Named “Act II, “in reference to the second part of a play”m’explique-t-on, “it’s a new interpretation of the terroirs of Château Couhins-Lurton”. In marketing language, it is generally a way of describing the second wine of a less prestigious classified growth. Not here. Because the cru costs almost the same price as its classic alter, whereas it is not, classic. “The idea is really to tell another story, with the same terroir and the same grapes”assures me Jacques Lurton, sixth child of André Lurton. “But with a selection of terroirs focused on freshness and vigor, to bring out the fruitiness of the wine. »
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