When it comes to wine, little has changed in Bordeaux for centuries – but in the 1990s a group of outsiders shook things up: the garagistes. Vinfolio’s Sophie Thorpe talks to three of the movement’s leading figures about its legacy – and what it means for Bordeaux today
In 1991, Jean-Luc Thunevin made the first vintage of Valandraud. In the workshop next to his house, he produced just 100 cases of wine from tiny yields, de-stemming and punching it down by hand and aging it in 100% new French oak. Although it didn’t have a name yet, the garagiste movement had been born.
As the Super Tuscans had in Italy, these maverick bottlings, operating outside the official classification, rocked the world of wine – especially in the conservative heartland of Bordeaux. At the same time, the likes of Harlan and Colgin were starting to prove the power of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa. Meanwhile on the East Coast, a lawyer named Robert Parker had already gathered a loyal following for his newsletter, offering independent advice and a novel scoring system. The internet was just getting started. Everything in the world of wine was changing.
“In the 1990s there was formidable energy and consumers who were ready to accept something new,” says Thunevin. But the Bordeaux wine trade was stuck in the Middle Ages, he says; it was aristocratic, closed – and one reason why the garagistes, a collection of outsiders, caused quite such a stir. Thunevin himself had been in banking, while Jonathan Maltus (Le
