A version of this article is published by the Financial Times.
Do you have a niece? Could you imagine working with her? Exactly.
But seven years ago Aline Baly (pictured right, courtesy of Exceptio), a vivacious, and extremely loquacious, American MBA who had left her native France at the age of eight, decided she wanted to help her uncle Philippe run one of the most famous sweet white bordeaux properties, Château Coutet. (As my predecessor as FT wine correspondent Edmund Penning-Rowsell always insisted, the last T is sounded.)
In November 2005 she took time off her job in marketing for an American biosciences company to work as a translator at a Decanter magazine event in London. ‘It took me just two hours to see what fun wine is,’ she says now. ‘There’s lots of good conversation. And wine culture is so attractive, you can connect to anyone in the world – from a country music star in Nashville to a top-level scientist – through wine. I turned to my uncle and asked, can I come on board? I’ll think about it, said Uncle Philippe.’
Pictured below he did finally agreed to share his 13th century fortress (built by the English) with his young niece (she turned 35 yesterday [4 Sep]), creating a separate space for Aline. But she admits it was not plain sailing. ‘The first year was the hardest. He came into the office one June morning to say he thought it wasn’t working out. But my cousin in HR got us round a table and we realised it was just a problem of language and different cultures. Now we’re thick as thieves and I call him multiple times a day. We have to be really in tune because we’re often on the road together.’
Aline’s first complete vintage was 2009. Her Uncle Philippe, holding up a bunch of Sémillon grapes covered with grey-purple dust, the result of the famous noble rot responsible for the finest sweet white bordeaux, told her she would never again see such a miraculous combination of quality and quantity. But in fact the 2010 and especially 2011 vintages produced excellent Sauternes too, although she admits that in 2012 and 2013 she started to ‘understand why my uncle stresses so much.’ And even Aline had to admit that last year, while producing spectacular if meagre results, was particularly stressful because it was so dry that it took forever for the noble rot, or botrytis, to develop. But overall Sauternes, including the Barsac commune where Coutet is the oldest property, has had a much better run of vintages than red bordeaux.
The great challenge now for those making the most luxurious wines in the world is forging direct links with the individuals likely to buy them. One of the things that Aline has brought to Château Coutet, once a sister property of world-famous Château d’Yquem and owned by the Balys of Alsace since 1977, is a keen awareness of the power of social media. ‘I’m personally interested in the whole science of social networking,’ she says. ‘I saw it as a way to build a relationship with individual buyers and now I connect with as many people as I have cases to sell.’ Unusually for a smart Bordeaux proprietor, she is not ashamed to admit that she has sold wine through Twitter and Facebook – indeed she boasts that @ChateauCoutet is among the top five Twitter accounts for Bordeaux classed growths. Every Thanksgiving she sends a card to 700 fans of Coutet with a special Coutet-matched menu, for instance.
But at first it was not easy to explain to Bordeaux’s stratified and conservative society just what she had in mind. According to Aline, the first person to take her plans seriously was Philippe Dhalluin, the winemaker at Château Mouton Rothschild. This Pauillac first growth has been responsible for selling Coutet since 1994 (Coutet being a useful riposte to fellow Pauillac first growth Château Lafite’s own Sauternes estate Château Rieussec) and Dhalluin helps with the vinification of Coutet. The team at Mouton have been so impressed with her ingenious sales techniques that they have given her a part-time job there too.
I couldn’t help noticing however that, although most of what she says she is like a breath of (American-accented) fresh air, she talks on autopilot when asked about how unfashionable Sauternes is. This is clearly a sore point and one she has to address all the time.
She sees her job as demonstrating by whatever means that their wine can be served in a wide range of contexts and not just with dessert and foie gras, her and Uncle Philippe entertaining lavishly and often at the château. She cites Thai food, cheese and many a main course as suitable matches. ‘I love spicy lobster with ‘06 Coutet. Roast chicken and turkey can be good with Coutet too; I tend to pick a big, spicy vintage like ‘07 and ‘08. With fried eel in Hong Kong, Coutet ‘05 maybe.’ She admits that in general she and her uncle drink relatively young vintages of Coutet such as ‘07, ‘04, ‘02, ’98 and ’97 but points out that the ‘88 is still very fresh whereas the ‘89 is much more evolved.
I met her in London in July, in Jacob Rothschild’s smart boardroom in St James’s, where she wanted to show off the latest release of Coutet’s very special Cuvée Madame, the 2003 vintage and only the fourteenth ever made since it was first produced in 1943 by Edmond Rolland, the second husband of Madame Guy-Rolland whose first husband had bought the property in 1925. (See tasting notes on the last four vintages of Cuvée Madame.)
Cuvée Madame is a selection of the ripest grapes from their two oldest (contiguous) parcels of Sémillon vines (now 55 years old). The team at Coutet, which comprises just 18 full time staff, pick not just individual bunches but individual berries for Cuvée Madame, seeking a potential alcohol as high as 26% when the legal minimum is 20%.
Only about 100 to 120 cases are ever made of this unctuous rarity, so I felt very privileged to be able to taste the super-rich 1995, the gloriously taut 1997 and the truly stupendous 2001 released three years ago, as well as the new baby, the quite advanced, opulent 2003. I try to suggest drinking windows when I publish tasting notes and was reaching into decades far into the second half of this century for these wines. Great sweet white bordeaux lasts even longer than great red bordeaux even though it is generally much less expensive. Two good reasons for buying it.