Château Charmail

In the buttoned-up Bordeaux world of closed doors and oblique glances, there’s something refreshingly charming and old-world at the historical Left Bank estate of Château Charmail [shar-MAI]. The estate may date from the 18th century, but when you call them, they answer the phone! Instead of hushing you to a vertical tasting, they invite you to take a walk among their vines to catch a glimpse of the Gironde River. Charming, however, doesn’t preclude this estate’s keen ambition: to continue to be not only a rising star, but a star in the firmament of world-class Bordeaux fine wines. How does that happen?

People:
In 2021, under the tutelage of Médoc native Madame Valérie Liquard-Goudet, new energy and focus have underlined the incredible work of Bernard d’Halluin, the proprietor since 2008 and the man who moved the viticulture away from conventional farming. The team around them includes their historic winemaker from the Loire, Sébastien Pineau. He’s a sensitive soul who leads the team at Charmail with organic farming and a more hands-off take on winemaking. He has also been made part owner with d’Halluin and Liquard-Goudet—a rarity in Bordeaux. Vivien Liquard heads up sales, but it’s a family affair, so he’s happy to help out during harvest as well. A Médoc local, he knows intimately the soils and producers of Bordeaux like the back of his hand. Finally, Madame Valérie Liquard-Goudet’s son, Augustine Liquard-Goudet (Vivien is his uncle), is the one who brings everyone together, and creates the vision for Charmail.

This is a team that looks to the experience and know-how of tradition, confronting the future with just the right amount of experimentation—a decidedly different approach from that of most of Bordeaux’s producers, who either hide behind tradition or continually implement the next technical gizmo every year in the cellar.

Saint Seurin de Cadourne, and Charmail’s Medieval Soil Maps:
Before the famous 1855 Bordeaux Classification, the village of Saint-Seurin—along with Pauillac, St-Julien and Margaux—was originally classified as a First Growth (Premier Cru) in the 1776 classification by the Intendant de Guyenne. Nowadays, we all know that no classification can tell the whole story, but the point is that the soils around Saint-Seurin have historically been considered ideal for vineyards.

So, where exactly is Saint-Seurin? It is actually quite easy to find since it lies where the Gironde bends due to a limestone embankment. In a perfect world, Charmail would be able to write Saint Seurin on its label, but instead it must use the Haut-Médoc (see footnote 1), as must its next-door neighbour, Château Sociando-Mallet. The best soils in Saint-Seurin are a continuation of St-Estèphe’s, mostly plots of gravel and clayey limestone. In fact, Charmail’s label appears in The World Atlas of Wine under the St-Estèphe page!

Digging into Charmail’s individual plots, we find that they have been mapped out and matched to particular grape varieties since medieval times. Claude Masse’s historic map provides the first example of the Charmail being mentioned in 1709:

The map clearly shows that at the beginning of the 18th century, a year before the birth of the New French Clarets, and just before the great winter of 1709, most of the current Château Charmail plots were planted to vines. The remaining plots were dedicated to pasture. The contours of this ancestral vineyard, following medieval tradition, intersect the main lines of the soil map, and follow the contours of the land. In Charmail, as in the village as a whole, vines were planted on the gravel soils the gravelly soils of the terrace and the edge of the terrace, as well as the colluvium of the slope.

And so, today, every soil plot matches with a variety. Cabernet Sauvignon is grown on silicate gravel from the Pyrénées; these are Charmail’s highest and most well-drained soils, giving long tannins and vertical structure to the finished wines. The estate’s vision for textural elegance starts with their percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon, which is a bit lower than most Left Bank producers’; it hovers around 33%, edging up or down, as the vintage dictates (see footnote 2). Merlot adds lifting acidity; it is grown on colluvium soils of red clay with a high content of oxidized iron. Augustine adds that this soil “retains enough water to give lots of acidity and freshness to our Merlot grapes, while the iron gives distinct savoury, almost salty, notes. One day, I took a tank sample of the Merlot bottling and had it with canard à l’orange. It worked out really well.”

Winemaker Sébastien is quick to point out:

Our Merlot often has blackberry and fresh plum notes that give texture to the Cabernet, and of course the spice from Petit Verdot is important too. With all the work we do in the vineyard, we never have vegetal Cabernet or Merlot, nor do we have too-extracted wines. Of course, the soil helps us here, too, to retain acidity, as well as early picking in hot years. Every time I work in the vineyards, or in the cellar, my mantra for every decision is équilibre, équilibre, équilibre. It’s what I search for from these soils, varieties, and finished Charmail wines.

A small percentage of Cabernet Franc, grown on clayey limestone, provides complexity in the tannic structure, and offers interesting floral aromatics. And Petit Verdot? Augustine told us recently on a visit that “it’s kind of our secret sauce.” He explains further:

It’s always picked last, thus representing the whole climate of the vintage, for better or worse; it gives Charmail’s wines a distinct aromatic spice that’s found not only in the nose, but also its retronasal smell. It was a key addition to the vineyard and final blend that previous owner Olivier Sèze gave a few decades ago, and it’s really something that I can recognize right away when I am blind-tasting with other Bordeaux wines in a line-up.

Petit Verdot requires ample water to grow properly, and for that, it is grown on the rich and hydrated alluvial soils locally called palus (pa-LOO; from the Latin palus meaning marsh). These areas, nearer to the river banks, were where ancient Romans would grow their grapes with quantity in mind. In medieval times, quality came to outrank quantity as a goal, and vineyard holdings shifted over to the gravel soils. Today, palus soils and Petit Verdot make a good coupling; poorer soils would overly accentuate its tannins, and the spice element would be lacking since the grapes would shrivel from lack of water.

Cellar:
With an eye toward further increasing tannin / fruit équilibre, Sébastien and Augustine have been adding more and more large (17HL) concrete eggs into the mix in the cellar, removing obvious wood notes and wood tannins. Sébastien is a bit mystical (that’s a whole other write-up!) as he explains the cellar work and Charmail’s “good vibes”:

We’ve been using spontaneous fermentations since 2018; we’ve also been backing off from too much cold soaking, which we stopped in 2021. Yet, something that we’ve found to preserve the fruit is the use of hermetically sealed concrete eggs, which we prefer to amphorae, which tended to harden the tannins. And the rest of the wine is matured in 500-liter demi-muids—we’ve practically abandoned 225-liter barrels. In this way, the wine is able to magnify the soil in which it was born: its deep, creamy fruit, silky body, and firm, linear tannins on the finish provide the best vibrations.

Closing:
One can taste how small changes, carefully tracked, are adding up to more refined wines at Charmail. Yes, the sheep make a difference, and so does adding in more and more cement eggs, and adjusting pick times, and being hyper-vigilant with every detail. It’s exciting to be a part of the process. One can almost hear Sébastien’s “équilibre, équilibre, équilibre” as the wines become even more nuanced. We think even fellow Bordelais producers might be inclined to relax into a smile and agree with that.

It’s ambitious to buck the system in Bordeaux while still being part of the tradition, but Château Charmail is doing just that. Charmail, ever charming, but serious and intense about world-class wines. Possible? We think so!