“We’re again.” Nicolas Audebert is asserting the return to prominence of two historic vineyards within the Bordeaux heartland of French winemaking—Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Canon—each of which he has managed since 2014. “After all, we have now loads of work to do,” Audebert says, “and yearly shall be a brand new problem. However we’re again.”
Audebert’s declaration marks an anniversary that hyperlinks these distinctive and characterful winemaking issues. Rauzan-Ségla is a 364-year-old winery within the Margaux appellation (or area), on the left financial institution of the Gironde estuary, to the north of town of Bordeaux. Canon, a winery fashioned in 1760 from a longtime property, is a part of the Saint-Émilion appellation east of town and on the river’s proper financial institution. In 1994 and 1996, respectively, the luxurious, vogue and perfume home Chanel acquired each—an extra asset for its upscale portfolio.
Three a long time at the very least had been required, Audebert says, to deliver these grand previous vineyards to their finest: one to grasp, one to restructure, one to make exact plans and open the curtain on the long run, as he places it. “Chanel has given us the time to do all of it correctly, to be who we need to be, not moving into a rush, not pushing an excessive amount of. That is the right second,” he says, “to rejoice two labels that at the moment are thought of among the many finest wines of Bordeaux—as they had been prior to now.”
Château Rauzan-Ségla, within the Margaux appellation within the Bordeaux area. Its vineyards are made up of a mosaic of parcels of land, the vines rising in deep gravel above an expansive limestone terrace, with a number of variations in soil make-up and grape kind {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
Reviving these traditional wines, whereas sustaining their particular person traditions, has introduced their ranges of execution, based on Audebert, as much as these of Chanel, a home identified for exacting requirements of expertise, savoir faire, and custom combined with analysis and improvement. It additionally permits the winemaker to reference a favorite dictum—“La mode se démode; le model jamais” (vogue goes out of vogue; model, by no means)—of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the legendary designer and founding father of the marque whose companions, the Wertheimer household, personal it to this present day.
Two wines, one tradition
The late Seventeenth-century château at Rauzan-Ségla, its farm and outbuildings are ranged alongside a street into the village of Margaux. With their lateral disposition they seem to embrace the land, or terroir: deep seams of gravel sitting on a terrific vein of limestone. This core geology implies that the Rauzan-Ségla vines—principally cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes, with cabernet franc and petit verdot raised in a lot smaller volumes to work as a remaining “spice”—sit in poor however well-drained soil that causes them to ship deep roots down in direction of the limestone bedrock, producing a particular flavour within the mature grapes.
Rauzan-Ségla is made up of quite a few parcels, or tons, of vines—some giant, some tiny—intermixed in a fancy mosaic, with parcels owned by neighbouring estates. The constituent components are damaged into typically very small batches within the nurturing of the grapes, their choosing and vinification, to make a remaining mix constructed on complexity.
Château Canon: the 18th-century home is about in rolling nation with its walled vineyards reaching proper as much as the historic city of Saint-Émilion {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
The white-stone 18th-century château at Canon sits in a fold of rolling nation and appears out on rows of vines, with the nice stone belltower of the city of Saint-Émilion on the horizon. These parcels are planted with merlot and cabernet franc vines in a combined clay and limestone soil set on a terrific limestone plateau. With the consistency in terroir throughout the property, the batches of grapes taken on the classic are usually of constant, homogeneous high quality.
Audebert likens the distinction between making wine at Rauzan-Ségla and at Canon to the distinction between conducting an orchestra and acting on a solo instrument. Each carry the identical worth to critical music lovers however the former requires bringing a number of gamers collectively to create a shared concord, whereas with the latter the harmonics are generated throughout one instrument.
From one financial institution to a different
The left and proper banks of the Gironde are sometimes characterised as standing in clannish opposition to one another—a lot within the method of the Left Financial institution and Proper Financial institution of the Seine in Paris—however Audebert sees them as joined by the river; two vineyards united by a single tradition of constructing wine “sincerely and actually” whereas exhibiting a humility within the face of time and nature. The crew throughout each vineyards focuses on analysis and improvement, however “by staying humble”, François Baudoux, the technical director at Rauzan-Ségla, says, “we study one thing new on daily basis”.
Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Canon are on reverse banks of the Gironde estuary. The final supervisor of each vineyards, Nicolas Audebert, sees them as being joined by the river, in a single tradition of constructing wine “sincerely and actually” Map: The Artwork Newspaper based mostly on cartography by Lozz/Adobe Inventory
That connection throughout the Gironde is caught within the e-book From One Financial institution to One other (2020), a good-looking photograph essay the place the primary half, on Rauzan-Ségla, counts down from web page 92 to 1—ending on the centrefold of a haunting broad angle shot of the wealthy progress of reed beds and hedge that strains the Gironde—after which, for the second part, on Canon, operating upwards from pages one to 92. This conceptual play on numbers is all at one with a commerce and an business the place time, numerology and chronology are central to previous, current and future.
The bridging function of the river can also be clear to guests who take a ship journey from the place Rauzan-Ségla borders the Gironde—near the place that river is fashioned by the merging of the Dordogne and the Garonne—upriver to the centre of Bordeaux earlier than finishing the path to Saint-Émilion by street. The journey brings dramatically house Bordeaux’s function within the periodic booms within the area’s wine exports—with the sight of oceangoing cargo ships anchored not removed from town centre after navigating considered one of Europe’s largest estuaries.
On the time of the Roman empire occupying forces on the Gironde despatched wine to succour their garrison in England. Within the early thirteenth century the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, heiress of the duchy encompassing Bordeaux and the remainder of the Languedoc area was queen first of France after which of England (the English time period claret, for Bordeaux wines, is a reminder of the light-coloured “clairet” wines from the area favoured in London within the Center Ages).
The Dutch, on the top of their buying and selling empire within the Seventeenth and 18th centuries introduced experience in drainage to bettering the standard of the vineyards and money to export Bordeaux wines. Then, within the mid-Nineteenth century the governing class of the UK, enriched by empire and the commercial revolution, developed a robust style for Bordeaux wines and exports rose dramatically to what was then the richest nation on the planet.
Château Rauzan-Ségla has been owned by Chanel since 1994 and Château Canon since 1996 {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
The significance of time in winemaking
Audebert is among the most admired winemakers of his technology. He’s a technologist with a watch for precision; a farmer in tune with local weather and ecologies throughout the globe; a fluent, considerate raconteur; a clear-eyed decision-maker; and an fanatic who takes pleasure in his work. Earlier than assuming his submit in Bordeaux, the Provence-born Audebert had certified as an agricultural engineer and skilled at Krug, one of many nice champagne homes. He then joined Cheval des Andes—a collaboration between Château Cheval Blanc in Bordeaux and Terrazas de los Andes, in Mendoza, Argentina—as a winemaker and oenologist.
Now he’s the final supervisor of Rauzan-Ségla, Canon and two more moderen acquisitions by the home of Chanel: Château Berliquet, one other historic Saint-Émilion winery bordering Château Canon, acquired in 2017—and Domaine de l’Ile, acquired in 2019, on the magical island of Porquerolles halfway between Marseille and St Tropez, which produces scrumptious white and rosé wines.
Time is all the pieces in winemaking, Audebert says. “It’s in every single place in our job: within the winery administration; in the way in which we make the wine; within the time we give to the wine; in our personal interpretation, which modifications over time.” He and his crew members draw on metaphors from the breeding of racehorses and the schooling and parenting of youngsters to explain the lengthy timescale and detailed timekeeping that goes into their craft.
The grapes at Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Canon are picked and sorted by hand {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
It begins with selecting the best second to select the grapes by hand, separating them into a number of batches, with every batch processed in someday. It finishes, after the vital strategy of mixing the wine from totally different batches, with the wine in barrels, later bottles, ageing within the cellars. Lastly, there may be the winemaker’s sampling from the bottle, over time, to gauge the event of a classic because it breathes within the glass (and typically a carafe) in the middle of a meal eaten at a tempo applicable to a positive wine.
A combination of farming, gardening and artwork
Each Rauzan-Ségla and Canon have been licensed natural since 2024. A priority with sustaining the broader native ecology is clear in any respect the vineyards underneath Audebert’s care. Farms, vineyards and gardens really feel as one. The flower borders are created alongside horticultural strains, visually pleasant however deliberate to encourage a variety of species, and to protect indigenous varieties at a time of local weather emergency.
It’s notable that when both Baudoux, at Rauzan-Ségla, or Audebert present guests the vineyards, they use not simply phrases and gestures to make their level but additionally demonstrative contact: with the soil, with clay, pebbles or fossils; with a vine’s trunk, leaves and fruit; or with aromatic crops, together with lavender and fennel, in a naturally deliberate border of Mediterranean varieties that runs into the primary parcels of vines at Berliquet. These tactile interactions are a reminder that winemaking is a mixture of farming and gardening, of artwork, craft and science, all of it depending on bodily interplay with the terroir and its produce.
Winemaking as a mixture of farming and gardening, of artwork, craft and science: each Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Canon have been licensed as natural vineyards since 2024 {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
The crew’s ecological method is in step with a carefully researched understanding of the soil, acquired by way of using cutting-edge expertise, together with floor radar, and an understanding of the rising revealed analysis into the contact between crops and bushes at subterranean fungal, mycelial ranges.
That philosophy is made tangible within the honey from Rauzan-Ségla’s bee hives. The style is refined and lasting on the tongue, with an unforced, unsweetened voice. It feels in concord with the refined, ever-expanding and long-lasting end on the tongue of a 2009 or 2015 Château Rauzan-Ségla served to the château’s visitors with fillet of Simmental beef from the chef Jean-Baptiste Depons’s kitchen.
A priority with precision
All the pieces performed by Audebert and his groups at Rauzan-Ségla and Canon, and no much less at Berliquet and Porquerolles—within the winery, the backyard, the kitchen, the cellar—speaks of a severely devoted pleasure: a enjoyment of shared savoir faire; a give attention to precision, on working hand in hand with nature; in tasting a number of wines aspect by aspect and for the pleasure of visitors; of serving meals that does honour to the wines and the method of a meal constructed round produce from the day’s morning market; on hitting a real word.
A enjoyment of shared savoir faire: the processes of mixing and tasting are essential components of the work performed by the winemaking crew at each châteaux {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi
This focus represents an in depth confidence in mission, a priority with precision, that calls to thoughts a well-known verbal sally from the Seventeenth-century French grasp Nicolas Poussin. When requested how he reached such requirements of execution in his work, he answered, with Coco Chanel-like directness: “Je n’ai rien negligé.” He had uncared for nothing in producing his artwork.
It appears like no accident that one of many nice works produced by the precisely-minded Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time (round 1634-36)—commissioned in Rome by Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi (the long run Pope Clement IX) and now within the Wallace Assortment in London—options Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Bacchus, representing autumn, the season of wine harvests, is considered one of 4 figures symbolising the seasons, as they dance hand in hand, however again to again, to the pipes performed by the God of time.
The iconography of this canvas—stated to have been dictated by Rospigliosi—has been a lot debated. However the boldly outward-facing stance of the dancers, catching a declining daylight in opposition to a backdrop of darkish rain clouds, has an elemental high quality, as they join, by way of their barefooted festive “bacchanal”, to the earth, to the terroir. They’re holding a line, the road of a dance, confronted without delay by time and nature.
How do the dancers maintain the road? Nicolas Poussin’s celebrated canvas A Dance to the Music of Time (round 1634-36) options Bacchus, the God of wine, and is emblematic of the precision that distinguishes the work of the French artist and that of the trendy winemaker Wallace Assortment, London. Public area by way of Wikimedia Commons
How do the dancers maintain the road? That’s the problem for Audebert and his colleagues within the years to return. Methods to maintain the road in steadily evolving the vineyards of their care, confronted with the urgent timetable of local weather change, with out shedding the important character of the wines of their care.
Wine in an age of local weather change
Audebert and his crew have realized from sharing savoir faire with different companies owned by, or related to, Chanel; notably by way of the home’s 40-year alliance with a grower of perfume blooms in Grasse, the place the engagement with terroir, the weather and time—of choosing roses, say, at precisely the fitting second, when they’re open, however not too open, of steeping components in alcohol, and managing the event of a maturing liquid—has a lot in widespread with the challenges of winemaking.
Audebert and his crew have additionally realized from the various geography and native information of the worldwide wine commerce. France, Italy and Spain have lengthy since ceased to be the only real engines of authority and innovation, and a half-century growth in New World wines—particularly these in Australia, California and Argentina—has created expertise of winemaking in local weather extremes that’s there to be shared.
Because it occurred, Audebert’s first classic in Bordeaux, in September 2015, adopted a summer time of file excessive temperatures within the area, nearer to people who he was accustomed to in his work in Argentina. He tailored that have to the 2015 classic and vinification. The next spring, the wine critics lauded the Château Canon 2015, awarding it a number of prime scores. It was hailed because the wine of the classic.
The Château Canon vineyards again on to the traditional city of Saint-Émilion {Photograph}: Erea Azurmendi and Federico Reparaz
Ten years on, Audebert and members of his crew—Axelle Araud, the wine improvement director; Géraldine Léger, the picture director; and Marie Damoiseau, the press and public relations supervisor—try that award-winning 2015 Canon, over a lunch ready by the chef Julien Peurichard. They’re sitting underneath an historical bay tree within the Parcelle du Bourg (the city lot). A magical adjunct to Château Canon, it’s a courtyard house to a couple hundred vines, grown and harvested within the coronary heart of the city of Saint-Émilion. Audebert finds that the wine—which is all the time growing within the bottle—has misplaced a few of its adolescent over-confidence, nonetheless current two years earlier than, and that it’s transferring in direction of maturity.
That particular 2015 classic, and those who have adopted—the place local weather change turns into an ever extra urgent characteristic of day by day life and Bordeaux suffered a couple of heatwave that topped 40C in the summertime of 2025—are classes for the long run in an business the place winemakers are more and more confronted with a altering local weather and an evolving ecology. The problem for the long run, Audebert says, is to carry the road, to proceed to evolve the wines—at Rauzan-Ségla, Canon, Berliquet and Domaine de l’Ile—steadily.
His crew’s essential goal, Audebert says, is the “actual expression of the product” relatively than placing their private mark on it. No matter their winemaking backgrounds, they have to “really feel” the wine. Canon 2015 got here from the primary yr all of them labored collectively. He likes it, but when he and his crew had been to make it once more now they’d do it in another way, with ten years’ expertise of the property.
“Time, once more,” he says. Making wine is all about time.
