Château Figeac: Tasting wines from 1985 to 2016

A masterclass with Château Figeac wines at the recent Decanter Shanghai Fine Wine Encounter provided a perfect opportunity to check-in on recent vintages at the St-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé B estate in Bordeaux.

Does the 2010 or 2009 take the plaudits, and how does 2015 stack up against them now it’s in the bottle? How many more years has the 1985 vintage got left?

See my fresh tasting notes below and also read a brief interview with Château Figeac’s technical director, Romain Jean-Pierre.

Five questions for Figeac technical director Romain Jean-Pierre

JA: What was your first experience in wine?

RJ-P: I am from Burgundy but not a winemaking family. My father was a wine lover though, and had a well-stocked cellar, with lots of Bordeaux and California wines, as well as Burgundy.

He shared a lot of great wine that shaped my interest. Today, I return the favour; I worked in Franschoek for a few years before heading to Bordeaux, and my father has a lot of great South African wines in his cellar.

JA: Do you cook at home?

RJ-P: I don’t have the patience to bake, but I love to cook with great fresh ingredients, organic if possible. I studied food science before specialising in wine, and respecting the integrity of the ingredient is essential.

I love to cook with truffles and if you over-cook them you can lose all the aromatics and taste. It’s very similar with allowing your grapes to get over-ripe, or over-extracting during vinification.

Our estate director, Frédéric Faye, is from the Dordogne and his parents have truffle oaks, so he provides truffles to the Figeac team.

JA: What sums up Figeac for you?

RJ-P: What I love about Figeac is that it has a very Burgundian small-estate approach.

The fifth generation of the Manoncourt family is now in charge and they are very passionate about wine.

When I drive back to Bordeaux from visiting my family, often my car is full of Burgundian wines that I share with them.

I also love the feeling of exchange between different parts of the team. When I arrived in 2012, one of the main goals for Frédéric [Faye] and myself was to get more exchange between vineyard and cellar.

During en primeur each year it is not journalists who are the first to taste the new wine but the entire team of Figeac.

During the year, the vineyard workers taste not only bunches of grapes as they develop but also the finished wine, so they know what they are working towards.

This is especially important in difficult years. In 2013, for example, we did three green harvests, and got the vineyard workers to taste the individual bunches each time before dropping the fruit.

JA: Where’s your favourite place to relax? 

RJ-P: Cap Ferret, because it’s so close to Bordeaux and such a beautiful part of the Atlantic Coast.

I also love Namibia, sitting on top of Dune 7 [the highest dune in Namibia at 383 metres) watching the sunset. Corsica is my other favourite place to go.

JA: What are you reading right now? 

RJ-P: I’m reading La Disparition de Stephanie Mailer by Joel Dïcker, a young Swiss author who wrote The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair that sold 3.5 million copies in 42 countries. He’s a great thriller writer. It is out in French now, with the English translation (The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer) out in 2020.

Roman Jean-Pierre has been Figeac technical director since the 2015 vintage and has worked at the estate since 2012.

Château Figeac wines re-tasted

See also: Top five Bordeaux vintages ready to drink now