Anson: Château Malartic-Lagravière – A ‘powerhouse’ of Pessac-Léognan

The briefest of glances over this vertical tells you why Pessac-Léognan is such a great appellation to fall in love with. You get to explore both red and white wines that more than stand up to serious ageing, from an area that is still young enough (32 years old as of 2019) to feel exciting, but with enough time under its belt to feel confident and trustworthy. And not just the years since its inception in 1997, but the 2,000 years prior to that when vines have continually been grown in this part of Bordeaux.

It feels particularly important to run this vertical this week, just a few days after André Lurton’s death, as he was in the man behind the creation of Pessac-Léognan, and therefore partly responsible for attracting outside investors such as Alfred-Alexandre and Michèle Bonnie, who arrived at Malartic-Lagravière in 1997.Born in Belgium, the Bonnies had several other businesses outside of wine, and as of 2003 handed over the day to day running of the property to their son Jean-Jacques, as general director, and his wife Sévérine as marketing director. Their daughter Véronique became financial director in 2006, with her husband Bruno Laplane sales director of their Argentinean property.All four moved from Paris to Pessac, and set about turning what was an underperforming estate into an absolute powerhouse in the appellation, now rivalling its biggest names. Malartic is one of the 14 Cru Classés of Pessac-Léognan, and one of only six estates in all of Bordeaux to be classified for both its red and white wines.Jean-Jacques Bonnie is also president of the Cru Classés de Graves organization, and the family has thrown itself into the political side of Bordeaux life, hosting this year’s opening to Vinexpo and 2017’s Fête de la Fleur – with their own inimitable twist, as anyone who saw the giant disco ball bearing down on the dance floor will attest.

Jean-Jacques and Sévérine were particularly generous to bring out the wines for this tasting, with 36 wines in total, including Malartic-Lagravière in red and white from 2017 back to 2008, a decade in to the Bonnie’s ownership. These were shown alongside the second wine Réserve de la Malartic and five vintages, again in both red and white, of Château Gazin Rocquencourt, a nearby property that the family purchased in 2013.

Located next to Fieuzal, the potential for Malartic has always been high, but the vineyard had been treated with chemical weedkillers and fertlisers since the end of World War Two, when the Bonnies arrived, and needed serious attention. The first ten years was about getting to know the characteristics of what they had under their feet. They immediately stopped all chemicals and began a big replanting programme – then also immediately stopped plans for building a new cellar that would have been located slap bang across some of their highest-quality gravel plots. They have since built a different one, with a mix of stainless steel and wooden vats for the reds, and a separate white wine cellar, at the bottom of a slope where they could partly submerge the building and not worry about uprooting precious vines.

‘La Gravière means gravelly hill,’ Jean-Jacques told me a few years ago. ‘And the gravel heads down 8m across large parts of the vineyard, interspersed with limestone, fossilised oyster shells and veins of clay. It means there is great drainage, and an excellent water supply when needed, and plenty of spots for both red and white vines’.

Michel Rolland has been consulting for the red wines from 2008, and as of 2013 also the whites – which were first under the eye of Denis Dubourdieu, and then Greek specialist Athanese Fakorellis. From 2013, Rolland also consults at Gazin Rocquencourt, which was an entirely red vineyard until 2010, and now makes both colours, bringing back a wine that was last made at Gazin in the 1960s.

The whites at both estates are brilliant, easily showcasing why Pessac-Léognan is right to classify both colours, and I have tasted several vintages older than the ones shown here that are still going strong.

But it’s the reds that are unmissable, and that Malartic particularly have begun to rival the most elegant, concentrated and complex Bordeaux – think Rauzan-Ségla, Haut-Bailly and La Gaffelière in terms of style and philosophy.

What helps with this is the layer of limestone that sits under the deep gravel. Once they had stopped the intensive vineyard treatments and began manually working the soils, the roots were able to reach down to this layer, and the pH lowered, bringing a natural freshness. Things were also helped by less intensive green harvesting over the past decade. Gazin Rocquencourt, in contrast, has the same gravels, but more clay and is a cooler soil, giving real power to the wines, but the risk of rusticity that they have been working hard to streamline and finesse.

The ambition is clearly not finished – the size of the vineyard alone tells you that, with Malartic coming in at 20ha in 1997 and 53ha in 2018; mainly through the repurchasing of plots that were part of the estate in the 18th century. Of the vintages tasted here, the reds are a little more consistent than the whites, but both are capable of brilliance, and now more than 20 years in to the Bonnie’s stewardship of Malartic-Lagravière, it seems reasonable to say that Bordeaux has another Belgian dynasty on its hands.

Fact file

Château Malartic-Lagravière

Cru Classé de Graves (red, white)

53HA (46ha red, 7ha white

Château Gazin Rocquencourt

22ha, in a single block (19.5ha red, 2.5ha white)

Tasting Château Malartic-Lagravière and Château Gazin Rocquencourt wines: