Château Figeac and Thierry Manoncourt

Château Figeac 1969

Let me start this post with a photo which speaks for itself... ok, so it's a 42 years old Bordeaux, right? To be more precise it's a Château Figeac.
Château Figeac is a unique château in Bordeaux or even in the whole world in a sense that it was run by one single person for 63 years. Thierry Manoncourt took over the neglected estate in 1947, bought by his parents back in 1892. When he arrived there he found that unlike elsewhere in St-Emilion the soil there had high proportion of gravel - ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. So he uprooted some existing Malbec plantings and replaced those with Cabernet. Since that Figeac uses a somewhat atypical St-Emilion blend with 35% CS, 35% CF and only 30% Merlot.
Yet another curious story started when they planted some vine around a nearby horse stable. There the soil was less gravely and the wines from there were sold under the name "Vin de Figeac". In 1832 however that part of Figeac (some 15 hectares) was sold to M. Laussac-Fourcaud and the story of "Cheval Blanc" had started... and today - after the reclassification in 1955 - Cheval Blanc together with Ausone are the only two Premier Grand Cru Classé A wines in St-Emilion, while Figeac - despite all of Manoncourt's efforts - is still a class B. Strangely his petitions was rejected not on grounds of quality but of price. (His wine was considered to be too cheap. For example now a bottle of Ch Figeac 2005 is around EUR 80 while Cheval Blanc 2005 is EUR 500).

Let me list here some remarkable achivements of Thierry Manoncourt during his 63 years long career in the wine world:

• He was able to master the important second, softening malolactic fermentation right from his very first vintage in 1947. It was only in the 1970s that the method was finally used throughout the Bordelais.
• He was one of the first chateau owners in the Bordeaux region to open his estate to non-professionals, by offering free tastings to visitors from the 1980s
• He was one of the pioneers to introduce stainless steel tanks in Bordeaux
• In 1970 he was one of only three producers in Bordeaux to put the entire harvest into brand new oak barrels
• He had important role in the setting up of the Saint Emilion classification in the 1950s
• He was the president of Jurade of Saint Emilion from 1964 to 1987
• Losing faith in the Parker scoring system he stopped sending samples to him since 2006

Thierry Manoncourt

Thierry Manoncourt died in August 2010, aged 92. May he rest in peace.

42 years old label

Tasting note of this 1969 bottle is to follow...

Sources: Oz Clarke: Bordeaux, Jancis Robinson's Purple Pages, The World Atlas of Wine, Decanter.com, Wikipedia.org, wine-searcher.com