Libération Tardive Foundation Hosts Landmark Château Grillet Vertical Tasting

The Libération Tardive Foundation celebrated the timeless art of ageing wine with its inaugural event in London’s St James’s on the evening of Tuesday 25^th June. The exclusive tasting showcased four remarkable verticals from the revered Château Grillet, with the fourth flight presented blind. Esteemed wine writers, five Masters of Wine and passionate connoisseurs gathered to prove and challenge the Foundation’s core belief: ‘Great wines take time.’

67 Pall Mall Soirée

The Lutyens Room at 67 Pall Mall provided the perfect setting for Dominic Buckwell, a director of the Foundation, to raid his club cellar and unveil ten vintages of Château Grillet. Presenting three of the wines blind, the experts concurred that while terroir, winemaking and age-related variations are crucial, an additional decade or more in the bottle allows fine wines like Grillet to fully express their potential.

For Jancis Robinson MW OBE, “the most fascinating wine was the 2015, with all of 15.5% alcohol. It was clearly oxidative but not oxidised. Sui generis, though by no means a template for other vintages.” John Livingstone-Learmonth, renowned for his lifelong expertise on Rhône wines, praised the 2009 as “A benchmark Château Grillet, bingo maximus! Structured and linear with an intricate construction and notes of le bon Sud on the palate. It holds the requisite depth of former days that I knew as a young man, displaying intrinsic grace and floral complexity with a seasoning of minerality. The wine of the evening for me, it will just keep going for another twenty years, easily.”

Highlighting Château Grillet’s Finest Vintages

The 2009 vintage was universally declared the ‘wine of the night.’ Anne McHale MW noted its “remarkable youthfulness, both in appearance and on the nose, for a 15-year-old wine. On the palate, it indicates the value of ageing these wines, since it is far more expressive than the slightly closed younger vintages. It shows the most typically ‘Viognier-like’ characteristics so far with elegant notes of peach, honeysuckle, and exotic fruits.” Other older vintages from the early 2000s, produced under previous ownership, received mixed reviews. However, the tasting exemplified the Foundation’s mission to highlight the transformative power of time on fine wines.

The Foundation’s Mission

As a global non-profit, the Libération Tardive Foundation aims to reinvigorate the market and appreciation for the timeless tradition of ageing fine wines. Founded by passionate wine experts from the UK and across Europe, it seeks to emphasize the transformative effects of time on fine wines, a concept largely overshadowed by modern consumption trends.

Christopher Burr MW added, “Whilst winemaking skills have improved markedly in recent decades, enabling many wines to be released and enjoyed young, a small group of us have been increasingly concerned that maturing and nurturing a great wine is seen as far less fashionable nowadays. Producers, merchants, and even collectors are seemingly in a perpetual race to seek out the latest vintages. Often wines, that on release were rated less well or a lesser vintage, with good maturity become sublime and a great surprise in latter years.”

Picture 1 left to right: Jancis Robinson MW OBE, Anne McHale MW, Pauline Vicard and John Stimpfig
Picture 2: Four vertical flights of Château Grillet
Picture 3 left to right: Andy Howard MW, Richard Bampfield MW, Christopher Burr MW, John Livingstone-Learnmonth, Fran Bridgewater, Jancis Robinson MW OBE, Anne McHale MW, Pauline Vicard and John Stimpfig

Impact of the Event

The evening’s wine flights spanned from the 2018 vintage back to 2001, showcasing the transformative effects that time can bring. “This impressive inaugural tasting of back vintages of Château Grillet amply proves the point and raison d’être of Libération Tardive,” commented John Stimpfig, of The Wine Conversation. He went on to explain “Great, age-worthy wines really do need time in bottle to show their best. There’s no doubt in my mind that more attention needs to be paid to this by the trade and consumers.”

Richard Bampfield MW reflected, “As a Château Grillet novice, this was very much an education as much as an exceptional wine-tasting experience. I was surprised and delighted by the delicacy and finesse of the wines, but it was only in the more mature vintages that I started to find real character and personality.”

Château Grillet’s Legacy

Nestled in the northern Rhône Valley, Château Grillet is a historic monopole renowned for its 100% Viognier wines. With a celebrated past which includes visits by Thomas Jefferson and favour at the court of Napoleon Bonaparte, the estate was revitalised in 2011 by the Groupe Artémis of François Pinault. This move has been pivotal in restoring Château Grillet to its esteemed position among the wine elite, seeing widescale improvements in vineyard management and winemaking, spearheaded by the dedicated winemaker Chu Jaeok.

Christopher Burr MW highlighted, “Possibly the most notable of these improvements included the lowering of yields, retraining and certain Selection Massale replanting of vines, building a new winery, and reducing the use of new oak to less than 10% to allow the complexity of the wine to predominate.”

A Vision for the Future

The event sparked vigorous discussion among attendees about how best to promote the benefits of ageing wine to the newer generations of consumers. Guests focused on how best to demonstrate the value proposition of older vintages, coupled with an exploration of ways to support the logistics and marketing of mature wines, on a global basis. “It’s worth reminding ourselves – and fellow wine lovers – that so many of the world’s greatest wines only truly reveal themselves and fulfil their potential with time” added Matt Walls, author of Wines of the Rhône.

Pauline Vicard of ARENI Global summarised the essence of the evening in characteristic lyrical style: “Fine wine is an expression of time. These wines express the vision of their winemakers, who only get one chance a year to turn this vision into tangible reality. Fine wine also evolves and transforms over the years, making it something magical – a connection through time and place. More prosaically, this capacity to age is what makes these fine wines so desirable on the secondary market. The desirability of a wine can only increase if the quality of the wine improves while its availability decreases.”

In an unwavering commitment to educate, promote and celebrate the pleasures of well-aged wines, the Libération Tardive Foundation will look to champion the enduring commercial and organoleptic virtues of patience and extended ageing on a global basis. By fostering a profound consumer appreciation for mature wines and in supporting producers, merchants, auction houses and all the crucial intermediaries, the Foundation aims to ensure that the art of patient winemaking thrives, safeguarding this timeless tradition for generations to come.

“It is vital to defend la culture du vin so that new generations become aware of the glory, history, and mystery of mature wine. I am delighted that Libération Tardive will be contributing to the defence and promotion of this enriching cultural heritage,” concluded John Livingstone-Learmonth.

For more information, please contact:

Fran Bridgewater FCIM: fran@drinksnetwork.com
Christopher Burr MW: info@Liberation-Tardive.org
Media downloads: https://liberation-tardive.org/media/

Libération Tardive Foundation™ … great wines take time

 (left to right: Dominic Buckwell, James Belton, Francesca Bridgewater FCIM, David Pinchard and Christopher Burr MW)

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