The remarkable Provençal rosé wines of Château La Gordonne with
Madame Nathalie Vranken
Madame Nathalie Vranken is the director and owner of Vranken-Pommery Monopole with her husband Paul-François Vranken. Their Provence winery, Château La Gordonne, was established in 1652, and the site has cultivated vines dating back to the 1st century BC.
It is a Château of many firsts for the region: first to harvest at night in 2009 to enhance freshness, the first to transition to organic farming in 2010 and be classified as bio (organic), the first to use a unique shape of bottle and the first to vinify wine in sandstone eggs using an infusion method.
Madame Vranken spoke with Drinks Trade during her Australian tour about promoting her Château La Gordonne remarkable Provençal wines, her talented young winemaker and why Australia is an important market.
How has global consumption of rosé wines changed over the years? Is it still a summer drink?
Most countries in the world discovered rosé wine at the same time. It was like a blooming, like a joyful moment, which is most of the time linked with summer. Summer garden parties, BBQs, beach parties. It’s the moment when joy comes to the spirit of everyone, and that goes with the sun. So today, I think that everyone will enjoy rosé wine and discover there is a big difference between one and another. Today, people who drink rosé are more aware, want to learn more, understand more and drink less. When you allow yourself to drink a glass of wine, it should be good, and it should be the one you are expecting. So, when you decide to drink a glass of wine you do it with an awareness. So, the expectations of the people, the learning, the knowing about the wine is increasing.
Has rosé wine lost its perception of being a frivolous wine, and are consumers seeing rosé as a serious wine style now?
People want to understand rosé. If it’s like you say, just a frivolity, it has no interest in terms of winemaking. The soil, the property, the winemaker, the people working in the vineyard, want to achieve a target. They want to achieve the goal of creating and crafting wines made for drinking with pleasure under the sun. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have savoir-faire.
What makes Provence special for rosé wines?
It’s because it’s where it was born. So, the original can always be copied, but the original has roots. In fact, in Provence, it is always under the sun, so that is why it gives that very light sense of taste, which is made of fruity flavours and is less alcoholic. It makes for a happy style. Provence makes wines in a style of happiness.
We’ve experienced some beautiful rosé wines today. Tell us about the winemaking technique and the winemaker. What makes Château La Gordonne different?
We are fortunate to work with the very young Julien Fort, who is the Chateau’s winemaker. He is 28 years old and was recently awarded one of the top 100 Master Winemakers by The Drinks Business. He wanted to give roots, legitimacy, and legacy to his wines, which, as you say, sometimes could be considered a frivolity. So, to balance that idea of frivolity and to bring it into a wine world; the know-how is more important than the way you look. He brings a new winemaking technique to the winery which uses porcelain eggs making wine using no crush at all which is definitely a little revolution in the winemaking process. Julien has brought with him experience and we are so thankful he developed this idea at Château La Gordonne. It is very impressive for me and my husband too. He takes the berries one by one and places them into the eggs, and then he rotates the eggs. It’s the weight of one on top of the other, that extracts the wine. It is infusion. It is closer to tea than anything else. Here, the grapes make the juice by themselves.
Wine is a result of a process of man and woman working on the soil, on a vineyard, and on grapes with passion, which brings them to have ideas. Wine has always been linked to religion because it makes the beauty of what man can offer to nature. It is very interesting to have the view of that young guy working very differently on our soil and our vineyards and offering a new way and a new process of winemaking. It is the smoothest way of making wine today with a lot of flavour, with a lot of pleasure and certainly with a reduction of alcohol degrees compared to Provence 20 years ago. Australian consumers are not less educated than anywhere else on earth. It is not because you are a little bit far away by a plane that you are not educated, that you are not aware or don’t want to know. Australia is also a beautiful winemaking region. You have the Yarra and the Margaret River and other beautiful areas for making wines, and we are all very aware of what we want to achieve in drinking a glass of wine. Julien perfectly encompasses all that spirit and puts it into a new way of winemaking.
And your wines are classified as Bio.
For ten years now. It means we are as close as possible to nature. We were the first one to introduce the process in Provence. Like we were the first to harvest during the night, and the grapes did not have too much sugar under the sun. We were also the first to bottle in a special shape; today, it has become more common, but when we started in 2005, there was no one.
Where does Australia sit as a market for Château La Gordonne?
It is one of the top ten markets because we have had our subsidiary for more than ten years here. This is an important market, so we always provide our subsidiaries with wine from our estates. Australia was one of the first countries to receive Château La Gordonne.
How do you view the future of the roséwine category in Australia?
We are not going into a world that is drinking a lot. We are going into a world that allows us to drink, but it will be our choice. So, the choice has to be for the better rather than something made for being an everyday big-volume drink. So, with that view of the market, we are working hard on our knowledge, and that is why such a revolution in winemaking, as Julien has made with the Trilogy (Les Planètes, Sémaphore and Le Cirque des Grives), is very important for us to promote. It is niche. It is not made to be 10 million bottles. It is made for when you have decided to drink something and treat yourself to something good. No guilt. Just a treat. It needs to be something that you genuinely believe in. If it is not, you will not consider it a good treat for yourself.
How can we get Australians to drink rosé wine outside of summer?
It comes from years of habits. During lunch, we were talking about the temperature at which you should drink red wine. We have been trained or used to drinking wine at room temperature, but room temperature brings a more alcoholic sensation. Rosé is the wine between white and red. It’s more balanced. It is not too acidic, as a white can be; it is not too heavy in tannin, as a red can be. Today, we start to see more and more people reacting to tannin or heavy charges of tannin in the glass, so the perfect wine if you don’t want too much of these things is rosé.
