The Pont des Arts project was created by Thibault Pontallier (son of Paul Pontallier, the celebrated winemaker of Château Margaux from 1983 to 2015) and Arthur de Villepin, an art curator from Paris. Both Thibault and Arthur come from high-profile backgrounds, with Arthur the son of the former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Growing up in such a prestigious and privileged environment introduced them both to the world’s most exciting artists, as well as the world’s most successful winemakers. It was this immersion in both the world of fine art and fine wine that spawned the Pont des Arts project.  “My family has been making wine for more than 500 years, and since I was a kid I have always considered winemakers to be amazing artists who are able to transform and sublimate nature into something truly special and emotional,” says Thibault. “My father used to say, ’A good wine gives you pleasure, but a great wine can give you emotion‘, and it is exactly the same for a great music, movie or painting.” Pont des Arts is very much a project to combine these two cultural worlds, producing wines made – and inspired – by artists. “A certain painting will be able to show and express the depth, the power or the finesse of a subject,” explains Thibault, “and wines can do the same thing. It is the perfect metaphor to understand the magic behind a wine.”   The project aims to position the wine as a bespoke creation. Each winemaker involved in the project has produced a wine distinct from their “normal” range, bottled exclusively for Pont des Arts.  It is then down to Thibault and Arthur to identify how the wine resonates with an artist’s work. “Arthur and I went to the artists’ ateliers, and met with the winemakers for each collection, carefully thinking about the association between each painting and each wine, and to ensure the emotions that are evoked when drinking great wine or looking at great art are intrinsically linked.”  The first collection of wines was curated in 2010 and was in fact a collaboration with Thibault and his father Paul Pontallier. They both travelled throughout France to find inspiration from their many winemaking friends around the country. “My father, a few good winemaking friends and I looked for months for the best terroirs and the best grapes, tasting more than 700 different parcels in France to realise this unique project.” The selection process for them was clear from the outset. For each wine they were looking for three main attributes: “Each wine must have a very special perfume, epitomising each appellation, a huge power hidden by elegance, and a fresh lingering finish.”   Following the success of the initial releases, their collaborations with winemakers grew. They started to work with more vignerons who shared their philosophy and whom they wanted to work with. Etienne de Montille, Rodolphe Péters (of Pierre Péters), Château la Conseillante and Nicole Rolet (of Chêne Bleu) have all made special cuvées for them. “The most important thing is that behind each collaboration is a beautiful friendship, a shared vision, love of wine and trust. We work very closely with each winemaker for every collection. Making sure everyone is part of the process and that the art and the wine complement each other perfectly,” says Thibault. “The wines themselves are works of art, so we spend a lot of time deciding on each new creation.”  The success of the project has seen winemakers entrust Pont des Arts with some very special cuvées. Giving the team amazing access to some rare Premier and Grand Cru wines from some of France’s most celebrated terroirs. With such quality the volume unsurprisingly remains very small, each cuvée exceptionally rare and becoming harder to find, “Exactly like the great pieces of art we work with,” explains Thibault. “What I love with this project is to see the excitement of the winemakers we work with, because they can create something unique and different for Pont des Arts, something different from what they were doing in the past. Our aim is to give them freedom and allow the creativity to create something unique and special.”  Perhaps Pont des Arts’s access to some of the world’s finest winemakers and terroirs is not such a surprise given the reputation of Paul Pontallier. Securing artists for the project seems more difficult, particularly with such famous artists as Piet Mondrian. While some of the artists – such as the Spain’s Miguel Barceló and French Chinse Artist Zao Wou-Ki were long-term friends of the Villepin family, for artists like Piet Mondrian, Thibault and Arthur were in touch with the estate throughout the whole process (design, production, labels etc). “They were very happy to help us develop this collection as they liked the initiative behind Pont des Arts.” Thibault is keen to convey “a message with authenticity and passion,” he tells me. “I guess the people we are collaborating with can sense that, which makes everything much easier.”  The Pont des Arts project continues to expand with some of the world’s most exciting contemporary artists and winemakers lining up to take part in new collaborations. One of the latest releases to come from Pont des Arts is a Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs from renowned winemaker Rodolphe Péters of Champagne Pierre Péters with artwork by Miquel Barceló on the label. Look out for this release early next week.  Explore more Editorial

Pont des Arts is a collaboration between artists and winemakers to promote the intricacies of fine wine production through the lens of an artist. We talk to Thibault Pontallier – son of the late Paul Pontallier – about the inspiration behind the project. 

Pont des Arts is a collaboration between artists and winemakers to promote the intricacies of fine wine production through the lens of an artist. 

Pont des Arts, winemaking as an artform 

Pont des Arts: winemaking as an artform 

Wine, though the most intimate of pleasures, lends itself to the most expansive of texts. We drink wine most often – tastings aside – in pairings of two, or in lonesome but agreeable solitude, and, its narcotic pleasure being felt internally, we feel its effects as we feel a fever: almost secretly, in shivers. Though wine is like sex in its intimacy, unlike sex, the form in which we fetishise wine – our vine erotica – is not hushed and illicit but encyclopedic. On the shelves of any wine drinker, there are likely to be catalogues, dictionaries organised by region, old Parker buying guides some 600 pages long that somehow, though dated, can’t be discarded.  Wine seems singular among human pleasures in this. We don’t, as a rule, rush from reading a poem to great anthologies of poetry, or add to the savour of seeing a play by reading a big atlas of dramatic literature – not, at least, after we graduate from school. Sports fans, it’s true, like big books of statistics, but then sports-watching is a social act in the first instance – the more people in the stands, the merrier the occasion. With wine, we like the macro with our micro: with a solitary glass in hand, we look, in print, over the next hill, or the current vintage, at the vineyard across the way, or the vintage yet to come. It’s part of the pleasure the glass provides. The reasons for this micro and macro turn are, on reflection, commercial and artisanal as much as aesthetic. The business of wine needs a big picture of its domain, its resources, and its potential market – scale sets the stage for commerce. The makers of wine like to place themselves on a broader map of where wine is and what it’s made with. The great Bordeaux classification of 1855 is not just the noblest public monument to a beverage ever attempted, but a model of market-making and even market price-fixing. Once a hierarchy of growths has been established, it is easy to slot in the price tags. But there is a truth of taste beneath the ordering of value. With wine, we know that what we are experiencing is, however singular, still an intersection of opposed forces – as the peerless wine writer Jancis Robinson MW says of her first glass of Chambolle-Musigny 1959; “I knew at once that there was something in the glass that was sensually delicious but that it was also made, produced, and therefore suggested a history of intellect and discernment.” The pleasure of wine is the crossing of a place, a grape and a people; and so, we turn to the big books to frame the small pleasures.  What distinguishes wine from even a good glass of ale or a local brew is the specificity of the pleasure set against the scale of the system that made it – one that historically embraces the planet. It’s a First Growth, or a domaine Burgundy, or a Ridge Zinfandel or a New Zealand Pinot Noir made to a Burgundy model by American wine makers … the more we know, the more we’re free to feel. Most sensory pleasures are specific to the point of being illicit – aside from the bemused fetishist, romance is a spontaneous pleasure, often aided, to be sure, by a systematic wine. Wine is premeditated; we choose a bottle, let it ripen, and break it open. Even casual table drinking has a tale to tell, a journey to trace on a map. These thoughts are brought to mind in contemplation of Wine Grapes, the monosyllabically titled but unprecedentedly expansive dictionary of grape varieties grown to be crushed and fermented on this green planet. Authored by Robinson, along with Julia Harding MW and the geneticist Dr José Vouillamoz, it marks an epoch – several epochs – in our understanding of wine, from both a professional planet-straddling and an amateur glass-in-hand perspective. A book of its time (published in 2012), it was made possible, in part, by a revolution in the DNA analysis of wine grapes to help discover their origins and histories.  The DNA profiling of wine grapes only began in 1993, and the first ‘paternity test’ successfully concluded in 1997 – a mere few days ago by historical perspective – with specialists, Dr Vouillamoz among them, drawing astonishing Darwinian lines among seemingly unrelated grapes. Zinfandel, it has been discovered in the last 40 years, is not only the Siamese twin of Primitivo, but its Croatian Siamese twin. In proper Darwinian fashion, the book tells us, “It looks increasingly as though an enormous proportion of the grapes we know today are members of a few key families.”  The leading families of wine, Pinot and Nebbiolo and the rest, like the leading houses of Westeros, jostle and engage in incestuous inter-breeding as they move towards dominance. As Jancis Robinson admits, the quest for the origins of grapes can become surprisingly emotional. “The Zin quest is so … heated. There was a Zinfandel conference in Croatia, with all the great Zin makers, even Joel ‘King of Zin’ Peterson from Ravenswood, and we all had to present our various things about Zinfandel. There was a small cohort of people from Montenegro who reckoned that their variety – whose name is unpronounceable – was the true progenitor of modern Zinfandel, not the Croatian one. It became so … Balkan! And you know what? They may be right!” Wine Grapes is of its time in another sense as well, marking the moment when we have started to think of wine not solely in terms of region, but much more in terms of variety, with the semi-mystical term ‘terroir’ acting as a kind of Holy Spirit between them. Thinking ‘grape’ more than ‘place’ releases our imaginations. The wholesome instructive pleasures of the book, to which we’ll come, shrink beside the unwholesome, guilty pleasures of turning the pages to meet the failures among grapes – the near-misses, the long-forgotten and forlorn lost toys – which please more than the patterns of primacy. The pleasure of reading about the grapes whose juice we do drink is nothing compared to reading about those we don’t. In dictionaries, oddities and parentheses fascinate us more than the major entries. No one turns to the dictionary to study ‘and’; we go to study ‘antediluvian’. So, turning these pages, flipping through the P’s on our way to encounter the great Pinot families, we come upon the lesser gods, even the little misshapen gnomes and dwarves of the wine world, and we delight in meeting them. (A fascination added to by the forthright sub-heads the editors provide.) On our way to Burgundy and Pinot Noir, we also meet Pinotin, a ‘recent obscure Swiss hybrid’ which edges into Pionnier, ‘a minor but complex, cold-hardy American hybrid used in blends in Québec’, and, of course, Pinotage ‘South Africa’s very own cross, both loved and despised’, which leads us on to Pugnitello and even Pukhliakovsky (a Russian variety ‘with erratic yields producing light wines’) and even unto Pules – ‘a minor Albanian white’. Radiating out from five pages on the major Merlot, we bump into Merseguera, ‘an uninspiring variety’ from Spain, and Merzifon Karasi, and Merzling, dismissed as a ‘very minor disease-resistant German hybrid’. Why these lost or obscure kinds of grapes bring so much delight with them is a fascinating question. It has in part to do with our general appetite for oddities and obscurities, which once produced ‘freak shows’ and still makes us fascinated with archaic musical instruments: we are curious to hear the sackbut because we want to know what led to the trombone. It is also the virtuous case that variety is the safeguard of continuity. In an age of ever-decreasing biodiversity with just a few varieties taking the place of many possibilities, one Quixotic California winemaker, driving through the fields of Cabernet and Chardonnay, dismissed them all – with a wave of the hand – as “chocolate and vanilla, chocolate and vanilla”.  The health of the planet is safeguarded by the persistence of so many kinds. It is also because the existence of these minor yet still thriving varieties gives us a satisfying picture of adaptation, the central biological act. Each of these grapes has found a home in the world. It may not be much of a home, but then neither, face the facts, is ours. We identify with the unknown grape. We are all more like a very minor disease-resistant German, or a cold-hardy Québec hybrid, than we are something noble and complicated. Few of us are bottles of Burgundy; we can all identify as minor Albanian whites. In conversation, Jancis Robinson, sheltering at home near Kings Cross in London, a home with a view of a graveyard (though a cheerful one she assures an interviewer) – talks of the wine almanac with the blunt enthusiasm that marks her writing. Robinson, in addition to her obvious honours and credentials, is a rare thing in the wine world, or any world: a writer who writes with equal parts brio and expertise. She explains the origins of Wine Grapes. “What happened was that one of the co-authors, Dr José Vouillamoz, who had been at University of California, Davis, felt that he needed to earn more of a living, and came back to Switzerland and got a job working on Alpine botanicals. But he didn’t want to lose his relationship with wine, and he came to me and said that he’d like to collaborate on a book about grape varieties. I’d already written one in 1986, based on our very fractional knowledge then.  Over lunch, I took along Julia Harding, a wine writer who works on my website. She’s extremely punctilious.” (Robinson, punctilious herself, says this with such emphasis that the listener feels that, with Harding, we must be talking about new frontiers, not to say dimensions, in punctiliousness.) “She had exactly the right sort of brain for a project like this. José suggested that we focus on the 10 or 12 most planted grape varieties to help simplify it. I thought that that book didn’t sound interesting enough. I waited until we were quite far down a bottle of Valpolicella and said, ‘I think our book should be about every single grape variety we can find.’ He gulped and said, ‘Then that’s what we shall do!’” The idea of creating a ‘perfect map’ of a subject is one of the itches that govern modern life. John James Audubon set out to describe not the major but every bird and beast in North America, and that’s what he did. Similar ‘almanacs of everything’ fill our botanical and anthropological shelves. It is an ambition so tied to modernity that in the mid-19th century, Lewis Carroll perfectly satirised it in his novel, Sylvie & Bruno, where two mad professors talk about their dream of making a map that would be on a one-to-one relation to the actual world – utterly perfect, if impossible to unroll. “I loved the scale of the thing,” Robinson says of her perfect map. “So, we carved things up: José did all the DNA stuff and history because he had good access to it, Julia, bless her, did the footwork – how much of each grape is planted where – while trying to taste as many as possible, too! And I wrote the entries on the best-known varieties, and the introduction and read every single word.  As with any dictionary, we used what came before: we went through appellation lists, with all of the varieties allowed, some of them almost extinct. A nice little detail of the book is that we persuaded the publisher that it should have some colour plates, and we were particularly keen to include the plates from the world’s first oenological book, L’Ampélographie: Traité Général de Viticulture, of 1901 … just out of copyright!” She pauses. “Of course,” she adds reflectively, “it was José, naturally, who discovered that Pinot and Syrah are related.” The offhand nature of her mention can’t conceal the significance of the remark. Of all the discoveries offered in the book, this is perhaps, for the amateur wine drinker, the most exemplary and astonishing. Painstakingly tracing the DNA heritage of the varieties, these two noble houses, Syrah and Pinot – the grapes of the Rhône Valley and those of Burgundy, the heart of Côte-Rôtie and the soul of Chambertin – are unified as cousins. This happened not through willed cultivation but in the natural evolutionary way: through variation and adaptation. Initially, the elegance of Pinot Noir was transformed through the usual evolutionary pressures of place and mutations, into the earthy pleasures of Syrah.  Chance mutation and lucky planting turned one grape into its near opposite. (‘Cross-fertilisation’, we’re told, ‘was common until the early 20th century because several grape varieties were often intermixed in the vineyards, facilitating natural crossings between distinct grape varieties’.) The phylloxera epidemic in France from the 1860s on – though it did not destroy as much as is sometimes thought – acted as a kind of sieve or filter of grape varieties, a sort of extinction event in large-scale natural history, forcing hard choices and making obscure varieties less desirable to save by root grafting with New World vines.   One virtue of the book is to propose, in effect, a new order of wines by celebrating ‘secondary’ grape varieties. “For me, among the obscure wines, something about as well-known as Cinsault stands out – it can make such lovely wines,” Robinson says. “There’s been such a sea change as the century turned. Everybody once wanted to make fruit bombs to one of three standard recipes. Then in this century, higher acidity, lighter wines are finally revaluing, and so Cinsault comes into its own. “Sometimes I come across a grape that isn’t well known but that’s so obviously superior. There’s Aglianico – the name suggests it’s Greek, though no Greek variety has ever been found and you only get it in Southern Italy. Perfect for late ripeness, and not for cool climates – and now it has travelled to Australia, where they’re desperate for hot weather varieties.  The whole array of Portuguese and Greek grape varieties are so fantastic! And so individual. And I love that after a dalliance with international varieties, both countries are now celebrating their own. There’s another white grape, an Iberian variety that’s stunning, and, again, I’m not sure it’s yet been planted much: Godello! It’s a bit crass to say it makes wines that taste like Montrachet, if a little more terroir-y and mineral … but it does. I could drink Cinsault for red and Godello for white into the next century. “There’s such a gap nowadays,” Robinson goes on, “between the Napa Cab thing, and these young people who are buying unknown grape varieties that sell for a fraction of the price, that are really good. Such a lot has happened in the field of recuperating old vines, some so obscure that they don’t even have a name. Miguel Torres, the scion of that great company in northeast Spain became very interested in grapes.  At first, he said, ‘Hey Dad, we need the posh varieties, Cabernet and Chardonnay’ – and made all these wines which did well in the Judgement of Paris. But, with time, he realised that it made more sense to concentrate on the indigenous varieties. He’s been engaged for 30 years, putting classified ads in the local press – ‘If you know of a wine grape that you can’t identify, let us know of it, and – if we think we can propagate out – we’ll do micro-vinification.’ He’s actually rescued Catalan varieties that were on the brink of disappearing; I think he found 30 varieties, and recuperated eight for micro-vinification with sufficient character to give them a new lease of life. And much the same thing has been happening all over Italy. If we published the book today, we’d be up to at least 1,500 kinds of grapes.” The great sorting question of our time, of course, is the question of climate change and its effects on wine cultivation. Robinson is cautiously hopeful about Burgundy. “I was lucky enough to go there and spend some time. The 2020 harvest is the earliest ever, at least since the 14th century. But, whereas the 2003 vintage, that legendary hot summer in France, produced wines that were pretty bizarre, the 2019s seem as fresh as a daisy, with pure fruit. I’m no plant biologist, but the vines seem to be getting used to the conditions … or the winemakers are. They’re not extracting as heavily, but, given that, there’s no sign of added acidity (it’s routinely added in the southern hemisphere), the acidity is coming from the grapes as well. Even some real old Burgundy hands, when you ask why the wines are so fresh, say, ‘I really don’t know.’” About the Southern Rhône, though, she is more pessimistic. “They’re not helping themselves in the Southern Rhône: too many are trying to make concentrated, high alcohol, 16% wines. And maybe consultants are too powerful down there – one consultant can be responsible for 20 or 30 labels, and so you’re going to have 20 or 30 wines that reflect that.” It’s here, though, that the knowledge of grapes, and our possession of this specialist dictionary, seems particularly valuable. If wine is to save itself from the vagaries of climate change, it will probably be through the introduction and new use of ‘marginal’ or forgotten ‘heirloom’ grapes. Only recently, France’s Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO) officially approved six new varieties: four red grapes – Arinarnoa, Castes, Marselan, and Touriga Nacional; and two whites – Alvarinho and Liliorila – all described as ‘well-adapted to alleviate hydric stress associated with temperature increases and shorter growing cycles’, potential saviours of the region against the villain of global warming. All of them, of course, are charted and explicated in Wine Grapes.

In the end, the great strange truth of wine is the truth of life: a thousand vectors press down on us at once – place, history, time, temperature, luck and breeding – and somehow in the intersection we find, or make, our pleasures. The question of type and variation was very different before Darwin who wrote, oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) almost simultaneously with the great classification of Bordeaux, publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859.  (Oddly because his theory would have been true in any other time; not so oddly because the urge to map the world, for the ‘almanac of everything’, was typical of mid-19th century confidence, as Carroll’s satire suggests.) Before Darwin, who loved wine, the fundamental view of the world was that the superintending categories, species and varieties, were the fixed things in the world. Everyone took it for granted that the ‘kind’ the ‘essence’, was the real thing and all the little variants merely particular shades away from it. A grape was a better or worse instance of its variety. Grapes, like apes, were of one fixed sort. Darwin’s great overriding insight was that only particulars exist, and that species and superintending categories are the labile and ever-changing kinds. Every kind of living thing came from somewhere weird and is on its way to somewhere weirder, with a brief stopover at being the thing it is now. The elegance of Pinot Noir is a close cousin of the earthiness of Syrah, one state is simply a moment in the life of the other, and each are moments in the life of the surging, unfixable whole. Wine, braiding through the planet and only coming to rest on a name for a moment in one place, is a bit of scientific epistemology in your glass, the truth of the particular made potable. It’s a fine destiny for a simple pleasure. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue One Photography by Gavin Bond; floral set design by Studio Lupine

Essayist and author Adam Gopnik takes a look at the world of wine through the lens of seminal wine-lover’s bible, Wine Grapes, and talks to one of its three co-authors, Jancis Robinson MW about the joy of discovering long-forgotten indigenous grape varieties

Adam Gopnik talks to Wine Grapes co-author Jancis Robinson MW about the joy of discovering long-forgotten indigenous grape varieties

FONDATA: Pleasure in the detail

Pleasure in the detail

Few people have been lucky enough to be as immersed in Burgundy’s finest wines as Martin Donatsch. His father bought a pallet of top Burgundy, including those of Domaine de la Romanée Conti (DRC) and Armand Rousseau, every year from the early 1970s onwards. Martin’s birth in 1978 – a fantastic vintage in Burgundy – only encouraged his father to buy more, and Martin, now in his early 40s, has been enjoying wines from the family collection ever since. Just last week, he uncorked a 1978 DRC Echézeaux. This immersion has provided him with an extraordinary understanding of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – something that has doubtless helped him become one of the world’s great emerging winemaking talents. Donatsch is one of a small number of producers growing Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and the native Completer grape in Bündner Herrschaft in Switzerland. This tiny Swiss valley, for the time being, remains largely unknown – but, as Donatsch certainly believes, it may just be one of the world’s last great regions for fine wine production.The altitude (500 to 700 metres above sea-level) sees the vines flower a week later than is typical in Burgundy, yet picking dates are three to four weeks later. This provides a much longer growing season, allowing for complex flavours and aromas to develop in the grapes. Despite the altitude, the grapes reach good levels of ripeness thanks to the warm, dry wind – known locally as a “foehn”, that sweeps through the valley. Unlike Burgundy, autumns here are dry, so there is rarely pressure to pick before rain arrives, allowing for additional hang-time. The altitude keeps the acidity high, offsetting the naturally slightly higher alcohol (typically around 14%), meaning the wines never feel overly alcoholic. While Bündner Herrschaft has been home to Pinot Noir since the 15th century, Donatsch – now in the hands of the fifth generation – has pioneered the quality revolution in the region. Martin’s father Thomas Donatsch was not only the first to – then illegally – plant Chardonnay in 1975, but also the first to introduce French barriques to Switzerland, influenced by his vigneron friend André Noblet, the winemaker at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from 1945 to 1986. In the early 1970s, Thomas – a young 20-year-old about to take on the family winery – set off to learn from the best. Obsessed with Burgundy from a young age, he knocked on the door unannounced at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. In a fortuitous set of circumstances, Noblet had just returned from his first ever holiday (in Gran Canaria) and the first extended time away from his beloved wines. He had missed his wine cellar so much during the trip, he couldn’t wait to return. Finding the young Donatsch sitting by the door and desperate to reacquaint himself with his wines, Noblet invited Thomas to spend the afternoon with him tasting the different cuvées from barrel. Martin believes his dad gained Noblet’s trust by initially criticising DRC’s Montrachet 1968. Tasting the wine Donatsch reportedly said, “There is no way this wine could come from the great Montrachet!” A little precocious, perhaps: fortunately Noblet agreed it wasn’t his finest vintage, but the result of experiments in the winery. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, with Donatsch returning to the DRC cellars every year. On each visit, Noblet would always pour him a glass of Montrachet 1968 and ask his opinion before tasting any of the other wines. It wasn’t long before Donatsch was buying a pallet of Grand Cru Burgundy every year (at that time a bottle of La Tâche was just over £35 a bottle). Noblet also started to help Donatsch improve his Pinot Noir – first by giving Thomas his first three French barriques. These weren’t just any old barrels though, they had previously held La Tâche and were made by François Frères – who at the time had just two customers, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Henri Boillot. Donatsch took the barrels back to Switzerland, and the winery has been using François Frères barriques ever since. I asked Martin why the introduction of French barriques in Switzerland was such a revolution for the region. At the time, he says, the Swiss wine schools were obsessed with cleanliness – teaching the importance of filtering wines, using protective winemaking methods and using stainless steel tanks even for the red wines. The use of barrels was the opposite; it meant no additional filtering and a more oxidative environment. Donatsch believes the introduction of barriques around the world revolutionised fine wine. Angelo Gaja was the first to do it in Italy; Torres the first in Spain; Mondavi in the US; and Keller in Germany. But Thomas Donatsch was doing this 10 years before any of them, thanks to the influence of André Noblet, as well as Jean-Bernard Delmas – the winemaker at Château Haut-Brion, another of Thomas Donatsch’s influential friends.  Speaking with Martin Donatsch, you can’t help but feel he has got all his priorities in order. The small size of his winery means he can control every aspect of production, while benefitting from the variety that a life in wine can offer. Producing just 35,000 bottles a year means that when he is not in the vineyard tending his crop, he is in the winery, or fulfilling orders and redesigning his website (graphic design is another passion of his). Being one of the country’s most prestigious winemakers he sells his wine into the country’s top restaurants and luxury hotels, who can’t get enough of his wine. Donatsch’s annual release of wines sells out in just hours. While this is a great sign of his talents, it is also why many people outside of Switzerland have never heard of, let alone experienced, the world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the winery. Despite the demand for the Donatsch wines, there are no plans to expand: firstly because the authorities won’t allow it, but second because Martin loves the “human” size of the business and doesn’t want to lose that. Martin is, however, keen for more people outside of Switzerland to taste them. Beyond the tiny volumes that make it as far as export, to source these extraordinary wines you’ll have to (when one can) visit the winery yourself. You may just, knocking on the cellar door unannounced, receive a welcome as warm as young Thomas Donatsch did at Romanée-Conti.  Browse the latest releases from Domaine Donatsch or explore more Editorial

There is such domestic demand for the wines of Domaine Donatsch that they are rarely seen outside Switzerland. Tucked in amongst the Alps, this property makes world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that gives Burgundy a run for its money. Gavin Smith explores the extraordinary site 

Winemaker and Domaine Donatsch owner Martin Donatsch on his world-class Swiss Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that give Burgundy a run for its money.

Exploring Donatsch's world-class Swiss wines

The high life: Martin Donatsch

Everything about Glenfarclas is venerable. For almost 200 years, the distillery with one of the most enviable addresses in Scotland has remained fiercely independent and committed to quality. Where countless others have amalgamated and joined behemoths of the industry, Glenfarclas has remained family-owned – amassing enviable stocks of aged single malt in the process. Today, the sixth generation of the Grant family maintains many traditional practices, including direct firing its stills, to produce the highest quality, full-bodied sherried Highland single malt possible. This resolution and myriad difficult decisions made by the family during times of immense hardship have led to genuine innovation and secured Glenfarclas a place as one of the most coveted and collectable names in Scotch whisky. But just how has one of the only family-owned Scottish distillers become such an icon and which Glenfarclas bottlings are the most highly sought after? The history of Glenfarclas The Glenfarclas distillery was built on the River Spey in 1836 when Robert Hay was granted a licence to distil whisky. Cattle breeder John Grant took over the farm and distillery following Hay’s death for 511 pounds and 19 shillings and leased it to John Smith who left five years later to build Cragganmore. The site passed between Grant generations until the Glenfarclas-Glenlivet Distillery Company was formed with Pattisons of Leith in the 1890s. This partnership wasn’t to last long and Glenfarclas was fortunate to weather the Pattisons Crash in 1898 that threatened to bring the entire industry down with it. The distillery has firmly remained under the Grant family’s ownership since. George Scott Grant is one of the key figures in the distillery’s long history. During his 52-year tenure, which ended with his death in 2002, George built up Glenfarclas’s name and brand image. George had the foresight to restrict the supply of stock to blenders and squirrel away stocks. This decision has proven extremely lucrative as Glenfarclas now boasts a depth of stock that few other whisky distilleries can rival. John L. S Grant, the current chairman, has been with the company since 1973 and succeeded his father in 2002. The sixth generation is represented by George S. Grant who joined Glenfarclas in 2000. George works as the larger-than-life global brand ambassador, introducing the world to the remarkable Glenfarclas story and spirit. The distillery’s fortunes oscillated throughout various whisky booms and busts. Production has increased, been scaled back, and considerable stock laid down when times were hard. Throughout all this, the Speyside distillery can legitimately lay claim to a series of firsts – it was one of the first single malts to be consistently available when others were concentrating on blends and it was among the first Scottish distilleries to open a visitor centre. It was also the first to introduce a cask-strength single malt whisky. Today, Glenfarclas operates the biggest stills in Speyside and its Highland single malt accounts for two-thirds of the distillery’s annual production – sold in more than 90 markets worldwide. Glenfarclas’s distillery character The distillery, located one mile from the River Spey, is situated on a stretch of land that boasts the likes of The Macallan,  Balvenie,  Glenfiddich and Aberlour. The distillery sources its water from the neighbouring Ben Rinnes mountains. Glenfarclas is famed for its full-bodied, Sherry-matured expressions. The distillery only releases expressions at natural colour, often at cask strength, aged for extended periods of time. The unique still shapes and sizes, alongside the traditional ingredients and distillation techniques add to the distinctive distillery character. Glenfarclas new-make spirit is only ever matured in a combination of first-fill and refill ex-Oloroso casks from the highly regarded José y Miguel Martin. John Grant makes an annual pilgrimage to the bodega in Jerez to ensure his Highland single malt will eventually slumber in the finest quality oak. To this day, all six of Glenfarclas’s stills, which are the largest in Speyside, are direct-fired. The distillery team experimented with steam heating in 1981 to no avail as the family believed the final product to be inferior and lacking its characteristic full-bodied style. The distillery is capable of producing approximately 3.5 million litres of spirit annually. Normally, two of the stills are kept in reserve, while four work around the clock. Glenfarclas single malt whiskies Glenfarclas has consistently released single malt whiskies of exceptional quality from its enviable stocks. The Grant family has more than 50,000 casks slumbering in its expansive on-site warehousing at any one time to draw from. In 2007, Glenfarclas gave the world a glimpse at its incredible depth of stocks with the first release of its highly collectable Family Casks bottlings. The series of 43 (and counting) single-cask, vintage single malts spans seven decades and is highly sought after by whisky lovers. In addition to the limited releases, Glenfarclas bottles a “made to age” core range, which includes the 10 Year Old, 12 Year Old, 15 Year Old, 17 Year Old, 21 Year Old, 25 Year Old, 30 Year Old and 50 Year Old. The distillery also produces an incredibly popular cask-strength bottling named “105 Cask Strength”. Some of the most collectable Glenfarclas bottlings Notable limited releases include the Glenfarclas 50-year-old (released in 2005) and the 175th anniversary commemorative bottling, released in January 2011. The latter was an impressive vatted whisky from casks from 1952 and five successive decades. In June 2015, Glenfarclas launched the highly collectable limited expression £511.19s.0d Family Reserve to mark 150 years of the Grant family’s ownership of the distillery. The bottling was named after the amount (511 pounds and 19 shillings) John Grant paid for the Glenfarclas farm in 1865, and came with a copy of the original bill of sale for the distillery. One of the most remarkable limited releases is the Glenfarclas Family Trunk, released in 2018. Only 60 of the leather shipping luggage trunks containing 50 bottles of 200ml single malt from the Family Casks collection, dating back to 1954, were ever produced. Today, a single trunk, available to purchase from the distillery, costs £120,000. In 2020, the distillery released another highly collectable whisky for the Spirit of Speyside Festival, which was cancelled due to the global pandemic. Each year, a member of the team chooses a spirit to be bottled for the annual whisky celebration. In 2020, the responsibility fell to the men behind the still, and The Stillmen’s Dram was born – a 10-year-old matured in a first-fill Oloroso butt, bottled at cask strength. The Glenfarclas Family Casks Collection The Glenfarclas Family Casks collection is a highly collectable series of single cask bottlings from the family’s extensive stocks. Since the first bottle was released in 2007, the Family Casks whiskies have garnered a loyal following and become a real collectors’ item. The single-cask whiskies, which span seven decades, are some of the finest expressions from each vintage since 1954. Glenfarclas Pagoda series The highly collectable Pagoda series features two of the oldest Glenfarclas whiskies ever released. The extremely limited vintage whisky bottlings are inspired by the famous pagoda kiln which was decommissioned at the distillery in 1972. Each Glencairn crystal decanter is a unique work of art. No two are exactly the same and each element – from the side graphics to the exquisite pagoda stopper – have been painstakingly crafted. The Glenfarclas Pagoda Series is available in extremely limited quantities. Only 180 bottles of the 1954 vintage Pagoda Ruby Reserve (62-year-old), and 1953 Pagoda Sapphire Reserve (63-year-old) were ever made. The outrun of The Pagoda Reserve Trilogy (1956 vintage 59-year-old, 1967 vintage 48-year-old and 1971 vintage 43-year-old) was limited to 100 sets. Browse Glenfarclas whiskies or read more Editorial

Glenfarclas is an iconic, family-owned single malt Scotch whisky producer. As bottlings from the Grant family’s impressive aged stocks become ever-more collectable, Holly Motion charts the fascinating history of this fiercely independent whisky maker

A spotlight on Glenfarclas. We explore how the traditional, independent Scotch whisky distiller became one of the world’s most well-respected names.

Exploring the Scotch whisky icon, Glenfarclas 

Everything you need to know about Glenfarclas

It was a small yellow aphid that disregarded national borders, wiping out the livelihood of every grape grower in its way and there was no known cure nor effective prevention in its first devastating years. Even when a cure was discovered, growers were reluctant – and often financially unable – to use it.  As a result, phylloxera vastatrix  – vastratix meaning ravager – continued to nibble on the roots of vines across western Europe, sucking the lifeblood from the vines and leaving wounds for any passing infection. By 1900, 2.5 million hectares of France's vineyard had been uprooted, causing production to slump, encouraging dodgy dealers to make fake wine, and leading to mass protests.  The story of phylloxera in Europe started as a well-intentioned gift. In 1862, an American grape grower sent some cuttings of native vines to his friend in the Rhône Valley who planted them, unaware of the damage it would inflict on his compatriots. Within a year, local growers were lamenting their sick vines. Phylloxera had wanderlust, sparing no French region; nor did it respect the country's finest terroirs or illustrious châteaux.  However, a concerted national response to the potential ruin of the country's national beverage was not forthcoming. The French government was too busy putting on International Exhibitions in Paris (1867), opening the Suez Canal (1869) and waging war on Prussia (1870-71). In 1870, the government acknowledged there might be an issue, offering a 20,000 Franc reward for a cure. Remedies were offered including burying living toads in the vineyard, adding volcanic ash from Pompeii to the soil or inviting a marching band to play to the vines. Unsurprisingly, the vines continued to die. In 1880, a solution was finally accepted: graft European varieties to the roots of American vines. However, grafting noble French varieties - vitis vinifera - to the roots of these lowly American varieties seemed like sacrilege to many growers. It was thought they would affect the nobility of their precious wines. There was also the issue of cost: uprooting your vineyard, replanting and then having to wait between three and five years for a crop did not feed a family and the concept of state aid was still a long way off.  As a result, many tried to limp on for as long as possible, injecting carbon bisulphide, an expensive and toxic solvent used to vulcanise rubber, into the soil to stave off the inevitable.  The producers in the south of France were the first to be hit in the 1860s and they replanted with high-yielding hybrids. By the turn of the century, the Languedoc was producing more wine than ever before. However, the region's unscrupulous merchants made up for the initial shortfall at peak phylloxera by bulking out grape juice with sugar and water while others made wines from raisins. These practices continued despite the replanted vineyards returning to full production, causing a huge oversupply and depressing prices.  Urged on by a growing labour movement, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in 1907 to call for change. The Champagne Riots of 1911 The Champenois followed suit, rioting in the streets in 1911 and the root of their troubles also lay with phylloxera.  In 1892, the Marne was invaded by its first phylloxera aphid and, by 1910, 40% of the region had been affected. But this was no time for production to fall: Champagne sales were booming and to make up for the shortfall, dodgy merchants (and some of the seemingly reputable houses) brought in wines from the Loire and the south of France by the train-load. The wines were made sparkling in their cellars and the bottles emerged, as if by magic, as Champagne. Supply and demand economics suggested that the growers should have been earning more for their fruit as phylloxera affected supply and sales boomed, but fake Champagne kept prices low. Having borne the cost of replanting their vineyards, this was not how growers imagined they would be rewarded and protests ensued.  While most vineyards in Champagne and beyond are now planted on American rootstocks, there are some vines and vineyard owners that play wine roulette and grow vitis vinifera on their own roots. For example, three plots belonging to Bollinger were planted in 1960 in the traditional pre-phylloxera way. One has succumbed to the vine louse but the remaining two parcels are the source of Vieilles Vignes Françaises, a rare Pinot Noir-based Champagne that provides a taste of a bygone era.  We asked Denis Bunner, Bollinger’s Deputy Cellar Master, about the Aÿ-based Champagne House's rarest wine, Vieilles Vignes Françaises, which is produced on its own roots.  Why did Bollinger begin producing Vieilles Vignes Françaises in 1969?  An English journalist Cyril Ray proposed the initiative to Madame Bollinger following a visit in 1967 and this inspired Madame Bollinger to create a wine from the precious vines to commemorate her 70th birthday, which saw the first bottle produced in 1969. The wine was launched in 1974. Are the vines pre-phylloxera? If so, they must be more than a century old. No, the current plots in Aÿ were planted in the 1960s but it is impossible to give an age to the vines due to the perpetual renewal and the way the root system grow [the system is called provignage, which is like vine fostering when there is an empty space to fill. Take a cane from one vine, train it down into the soil and partially bury it with the end sticking out until it forms a separate vine. This is also done in the Nacional vineyard at Quinta do Noval]. There were three plots that weren't grafted but there are now only two. What happened? third plot succumb to phylloxera?  The third plot in Croix Rouge de Bouzy was attacked by phylloxera at the end of the 1990s – the vineyard didn't have protective walls around it. The last vintage was 2004 as we had to uproot it when it fell prey to the infestation. How many acres do the two remaining plots cover?  The Clos Saint-Jacques (Aÿ) covers just over half an acre while the Clos des Chaudes-Terres, which lies within the boundaries of Bollinger’s own lands, covers a little over a third of an acre. In total, they represent 0.36 hectares. Is there anything special about the soil of these two plots that means it resists phylloxera?  The soil is not remarkably different from that in the rest of Aÿ and as per the rest of Champagne it features chalk. Is this special cuvee made every year?  No. Only in declared vintages. What is the average production of Vieilles Vignes Françaises?  This varies by vintage, but falls within the range of 2,000 to 3,000 bottles. A total of 2,420 numbered bottles of the 2009 Vieilles Vignes Françaises vintage were produced. Read more Editorial

Following the release of Bollinger’s latest vintage of Vieilles Vignes Françaises, we talk to Denis Bunner, Bollinger’s Deputy Cellar Master about the Aÿ-based Champagne house's rarest wine, as well as delving into the archives to explore the history of the fatal vine louse.

Phylloxera and Bollinger’s Vieilles Vignes Françaises on the wine grown from vines planted on its own roots and thus vulnerable to attack by the louse.

Phylloxera and winemaking

Phylloxera: a vine pandemic

Miguel Torres

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