

An interview with Thomas Le Grix de La Salle
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Tell us something about your estate and winery
Our estate has started the organic certification´s procedures in 2020.
Château Le Grand Verdus is first of all an incredible historical place built in 1579 under the reign of King Henry IV. Located at the top of the hill, it overlooks with a 80m vertical drop our vineyard where biodiversity plays a major role.
Our family owns this estate since 1810, and now cultivates about 50 different plots of vines, vinified in parcels, and then assembled to produce a dozen different wines. The idea is to bring out the unique side of our terroir, with a very specific topography, within a very large AOC.
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What is the stytle of your wines?
The terroirs produce racy wines, full of energy and salinity. Powerful and velvety, even tasted young, with very beautiful ageing potentials. Our white wines are surely our most peculiar ones, to discover... 100% Sémillon, orange wine, etc.
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Past, Present and Future
Passé: Philippe, a creative grandfather and great merchant, at the forefront of the post-war agriculture
Present: Our father Antoine, insatiable worker, smiling and visionary. My brother Edouard, the artist of the vine, a sense of rigor mixed with an immense agronomic knowledge. I, Thomas, the identity of the wines, the search for precision and for the expression of our soils.
Future: We hope to be able to give these immense passions to our children. And above all: the love of sharing and conviviality!
Cult quote: "We do not inherit the land of our ancestors, but we borrow it from our children" (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
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Something about yourself
I hope the wines will tell it for me...
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What are you most proud of?
The efforts of the past 2 generations, the fact that they so much believed in us, to the point of putting in our hands such a historical jewel, with a great potential, in the middle of a magical natural setting...
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Where can we find your wines?
Unfortunately not in many places yet, because some wines have just appeared in the last years. Among the magical places:
Hotel Sofitel Legend Metropole, Hanoi
Hotel Intercontinental, Danang
Restaurant Chill, Saigon, Michelin-starred restaurants of Bordeaux
Restaurant Garopapilles, Bordeaux
Restaurant L'Oiseau Bleu, Bordeaux
Merkur Hoher Markt, Wien
Soils: very varied, steep slopes, brown clays and the famous blue clays, Calcaire base
Cultivated grape sorts: 58% Merlot, 14% Cab-Franc, 12% Cab-Sauvignon, 8% Sauvignon Blanc, 5% Sémillon, 2% Chenin-Blanc, 1.5% Syrah... and many other projects of ancient pre-phylloxera grape varieties...
Hectares: 115 ha
Annual production: 850 000 bottles
Château Le Grand Verdus
Rising star of Bordeaux