The Porróncast
A Wine, Spirits, and Non-Alcoholic beverage podcast spotlighting the stories of people that share the Porrón.
A De Maison production.
The Porróncast
Agroforestry, En Primeur, and The Soul of Moulis-en-Médoc
In 2019, Théo Cordonnier joined his family at Château Anthonic, a pioneer in organic and agroforestry farming, as well as their new project in the gravel terroir of Grands Poujeaux, Lestage-Darquier.
Théo shares the principles of regenerative farming and agroforestry practiced at his family estate that are humbly transforming the landscape of the Left Bank. We also decode En Primeur and La Place de Bordeaux through an example that includes tickets to Taylor Swift…
The Porróncast is hosted and produced by Ryan Looper - @iamlooper
Follow us on IG: @demaisoneast @demaisonselections
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For deeper information on any producer featured on this episode click here and search producer name
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If you find a Porrón on the back label of a bottle, it is imported to the USA exclusively by the spectacular importer and team at De Maison Selections
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Original Music by @juliantamers
I think a lot of people call it moulis. Which is wrong. The appellation is moulis. Moulis or Médoc is the full name. Because only moulis you can find it in in other places. You have a moulis on Ariège, so in the Pyrenees Mountain. They make great cheese there. So Moulis, because we we pronounce all the all the letters in uh in the Medoc region where where I come from, comes from Moulin. It's a word that means uh windmill or meal because uh in Moulis there were many mills.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, this is very New York, I love it.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, can we share this in the in the mic? Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Peroncast. I'm your host, Ryan Luper. Today we welcome Theo Cordonier from Lestage Jorquier and Chateau Anthonique in Bordeaux to talk about agroforestry, organics, and the future. And maybe you decode a little bit of these terms we think we know so much about. Stay tuned. This is gonna be a good one. Theo, let's jump right in. Welcome to New York.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:We are in a moment with Bordeaux, and I want to make sure that we talk about how special both Lestage and Anthonique are from a perspective of regenerative farming, agroforestry, uh, where you are in Molise, which doesn't get a lot of play sometimes. And I think a lot of people don't understand some of the basic principles of Bordeaux, and we talk about it a lot without understanding the mechanics of emprimer and the place and what's actually going on. So I want to make sure we hit all three of those. Let's talk about Moulise en Médoc. What where is this appellation? What makes it special? Let's start there.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, so Moulis uh is in the Médoc region, so north northern part of Bordeaux on the left bank between the estuary of uh La Gironde and the Atlantic Ocean. So Moulise is uh the smallest uh village appellation of the Madoc.
SPEAKER_00:When you say small, we're talking 50 chateau-ish.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's it. A bit a bit less actually. There are 30 people at the moment, I think 35 registered in the appellation of so 35 registered.
SPEAKER_00:And in terms of hectare, we're talking about 550?
SPEAKER_01:600, yeah, exactly. 550 you're on the latest numbers exactly because we've been pulling out a bit of uh vines every chateau.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So you've got a small appellation.
SPEAKER_01:Where geographically it's sandwiched between uh between Margaux in the south and uh Saint Julien in the north. Precisely uh Moulise is uh a line of land that goes next to the estuary to a bit more inland. When you compare it to Saint Julien or Poyac or Saint Estephe, those three appellations are really uh next to the estuary, Moulise comes a bit more inland, which is interesting because of uh the variation of the differences in terroirs that we can have.
SPEAKER_00:And what are the different terroirs of Moulise? You have a little bit of Garonne gravel.
SPEAKER_01:So the eastern part of Moulise, Grand Peugeot is uh a plateau of Garon gravel. Then in the middle of uh of Moulise uh you have uh clay limestone, uh that's where most of Antonic vines are. And then the western part of uh of Moulis, it's more Pyrenean gravel, uh some other stories.
SPEAKER_00:One of the things I noticed when I was in Bordeaux the first time, and then it was even more prevalent the second time, was the David versus Goliath feeling, the kind of big, boisterous, rich chateau vibes, and then you go to what I would consider a little bit more um the David in the group, which is the the Bordeaux that farm really well, don't work through the Place, and are are are really fighting a very challenging fight because you're working smaller. And Anthonique and Lestage are so particular and special because you've been working on farming for a very, very long time. And I just want to give people a picture, the story of what Anthonique is and some of the aspects that your family has put into place to m to make it so special and so different and in the spectrum of Bordeaux.
SPEAKER_01:Historically, my family uh was in the wine business on the sales part. Let's say uh my grandfather and my great-grandfather had an agency company uh that were representing French wineries uh from the Belgian and the Luxembourgian markets. They were based in Brussels. My great-uncle uh had a winery that he bought in the 60s in Moulise, so that's a Chateau Dutruche-Grandpougeot. At the time, Anthonique was um uh the property of another family, the Hugon family, uh the descendant of Anthonique Hugon, the guy who founded the estate in the uh 1700. So the vines of Anthonique were making uh Dutruche at the time. In 77, my grandfather got the opportunity through my great uncle to uh buy Anthonique, so that's how we got into the into into Anthonique. And my father uh took over in the uh the early 90s in 1992, and I joined in 2019.
SPEAKER_00:So let's talk about listage d'Archie. But I want to talk about Grand Peugeot first, because outside of the real old schoolers here in New York, I don't know that a lot of people know much about Grand Peugeot.
SPEAKER_01:You know why? It's because Moolise and Grand Peugeot have um have been the forgotten ones of the 18 uh 55 uh classification.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. So Moolis for you were the for it's the forgotten appellation.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think I think it would have been a huge help for the the appellation to have at least one or two uh uh Rencreux Classé.
SPEAKER_00:No doubt.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I'm sure some of them could have been, right? Uh Chateau Peugeot, Chateau Chasse-Splin are really big names. Uh they are located in Grand Peugeot and uh they were existing at the time. So and I I I'm I'm sure as a whole you would have helped us.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the Grand Peugeot, it's a little complicated because there are estates called Grand Peugeot. So Grand Peugeot applies to gravel terroir in a particular part of Mouly-Saint-Médoc.
SPEAKER_01:It's actually part of the um part of the village. And and there you have uh mostly Garon Gravel terroir.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's heralded. So this is this is terroir that people speak highly of because things on gravel in Bordeaux get get love. So you had the opportunity to luckily acquire L'Estage d'Orquier, which is on this terroir.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and Lestage d'Arquier was part of the uh was owned by the Bernard family. Uh so Francois and Brigitte Bernard were the eighth generation uh of this family having and harvesting the the estate. Um they were they are friends of uh of my parents, and my my dad really knows their plots for having farmed next to them for three years or 25 years because uh my great uncle's uh winery uh is in Grand Peugeot, and my dad uh ran it uh from the early 90s to uh 2015. So he he really knew uh the terroir of uh of L'estage because most of the plots of uh Dutruch are neighbor to the ones that we bought.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, when we walked the property with your dad, he basically said sometimes you have a situation where to convert vineyards to your way, which is more regenerative, organic, is a long process. And in this case, it wasn't because he knew the parcels so well and he knew how that they'd been farmed, and it was a lucky situation, very fortunate. And so now Lestage, you you make a small quantity of bottles.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. The whole estate is 10 hectares, and when we bought it, we decided straight away we want to make a selection of three hectares and keep producing the Lestage d'Arquet Grand Peugeot as a as a really top wine and something special that could uh compete in a way uh with uh Grand Cru Classé in terms of uh of the of the selection that we make. What you have to understand is that in in Mullis, most wineries they can't do such a strong selection. So three hectares out out of ten is is sorry, is thirty percent. Uh usually in Moullis the first wine is uh 70-80% for uh wineries. Uh but because we have phantonique, so we we use three hectares of uh out of the ten for l'estage, and the rest comes into uh complementing the the blend of phantonique with terwarts that we didn't have access to before, it makes total sense to be able to do that. And then after the selection, we're like, okay, but at the same time, we don't want to copy the Grand Cree classé and have only new oak and an aging that's uh that's really classical. Why not take the opportunity of having this small volume to create in real life all of the tests that we had been making in Antonic for aging? So every year since we've been starting using Amphora for aging. So in Antonic on the first vintage, we had 8% uh that was age in Amphora because we only had eight Amphora uh basically, and now we have 23 of them. But even with 23 Amphora's, if we use everything for Antonic, uh, we can't reach 40% of the volume for lestage, as it's uh only 10% of the volume of Anthonique, we can we can have this. Um and in every test that we were doing for Anthonique, we really like when we reached the 40% amount of uh of the wine aged in uh in Amphora, and so we went straight to that uh for lestage.
SPEAKER_00:So the first vintage under you for lestage 2022 and Anthonique, they're both historic estates, but Anthonique So 77 when was when we we bought it, but we were already vinifying since uh 67. Well, I'll say that when you go to the Bordeaux, there's a lot of pomp and circumstance, a lot of talking about business, and one of my favorite memories is just grilling at your place and popping a couple bottles. And your dad has a pretty deep history with agroforestry, not just in France, but working in ecological systems in a positive way around the world. He was in the Congo at one point.
SPEAKER_01:In Congo and Guinea as well. Uh so he studied uh in Belgium, um uh engineer uh for uh forest management, forest and and water management, and then went to the Congo and Guinea, uh where he worked in Guinea for uh tropical forests. And more recently, he purchased a forest in the Pyrenees mountains that is managing uh pro silva forests, so meaning sustainably uh uh managed forests uh without cutting set species of the forest, but uh uh more selecting trees, preserving the fauna and the flora uh of the of the forests. So trying not to disturb uh things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, one of the things I noticed at Anthonique that was important were hedges, trees, uh the way your dad speaks about the whole ecosystem, which is both in in philosophy and it seems heart-led.
SPEAKER_01:It is.
SPEAKER_00:And he's someone who likes to explain. And my head was spinning because this seemed a deep contrast between my previous experience with Bordeaux. So what is agroforestry? Because it's become a very in vogue word recently. It's still it's still a little bit on the edge, but it's been something that people are talking about. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01:So it's a way of farming where you you bring back the tree into the cultural uh spectrum, uh, let's say. It's not something that links that's linked to to viticulture, especially. It's uh you can have agroforestry for other crops. But the the whole goal is to try and um and replicate the soil of a forest. The soil of a forest is the the best humus starter that you can get because it's always in regeneration, always with dead leaves, dead branches uh that are on the soil and uh decomposing. It's sheltered from uh the the UVs uh by the canopy. It's a bit humid, it's uh so it's it's it's really full of life, and there is a lot of uh of organic material in it. In agroforestry, you try replicate this soil, this living soil, but at the same time having a culture. The best way would be to have a forest, really, but then you wouldn't be able to produce the the crops that you're producing. Um the vine is it's uh a plant that uses the the tree as a tutor to go and make his photosynthesis uh high up. But if you want to be producing wine, having culture as we have, to keep having our rows and go with the tractor, so you can't really have a forest, right? So what you want to do is uh try and replicate and and bring uh all of the organic material into the soil. So the first thing that we we do is uh planting hedges on the side of all of our plots, following the ditches, ditches that uh were there from uh grandfather's work, um he did that to drain the plots, and those are humid zones uh that are full of fauna and flora, uh wild orchids, so you have uh small snakes, and if you add uh hedges on the side of those ditches, you don't lose space first, and second, you connect uh your plots with the forests that are around in the in the estate. So, first thing, um hedges, uh second is permanent cover or uh green cover. So we seed basically a mixture of uh cereal, of legumes, and all of those plants that create a lot of carbon and nitrogen that goes back into the soil and then trees obviously uh inside of the of the plots. And the idea is to connect uh the trees with the hedges and with the um and with the vines through the root system and through the fungi that are um doing symbiosis with those plants. So agroforestry is trying to replicate the living soil of a forest, and forest it goes through those three points hedges, uh permanent cover, and then the trees inside of the pots.
SPEAKER_00:I always think of this as trees become conductors in the system that are connecting all of the different instrumentalists, all the different players in the orchestra of a vineyard. How many people in your appellation, Moulis Saint-Madoc or in Bordeaux, are working in the same way farming-wise? Do you know of other people that are doing agroforestry, certified organic, etc.?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, and some pretty big names uh as well. One estate on the right bank uh called Domaine Emile Grelier, because that's the the estate that really inspired us uh to start uh with agroforestry. In the Médoc, we were the first to start doing it at the whole scale of the estates, but there are really really big names doing it as well. So Chateau Latour, for example, is really involved in two agroforestry, um Chateau Palmer as well.
SPEAKER_00:So it's a movement that's gone even to the largest scale chateau, because to your point, it creates a regenerative system in the vines, in the soil, and you just get more upside from having trees. You get the the shade, you get all of these things are happening at once.
SPEAKER_01:You get yeah, natural drainage, um the the trees are also uh hosting wildlife, they uh they might be used by by bats uh as um uh as ways to eco-locate and uh and uh extend their hunting territory over the vineyards, uh which is good for us because they they hunt some of the parasites uh like uh this butterfly that makes a worm and that basically eats the leaves and opens doors for diseases in the vine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you have bats working, they're the hunters.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have Batman helping us.
SPEAKER_00:We need all the help we can get. When you wake up in the morning and you walk out into the vineyards at Anthonique, what do you feel? What's special about it?
SPEAKER_01:What's mostly special, I'd say, is we are lucky to not have any uh any houses around, only vineyards. It's quiet, but not quiet at the same time. Um meaning but you have a lot of uh meditative noises, wildlife basically.
SPEAKER_00:It's nature.
SPEAKER_01:It's nature, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely that. I mean you you have birds chirping, uh you you hear the the wind, uh, you have uh you walk on the ground and um branches, you have leaves, um depending on the seasons, you have uh different noises. Um it's yeah, it's relaxing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I noticed the light. I always noticed that in in great places, is that the quality of the light feels different. Maybe that's the romantic side of me, but that's what I saw and felt.
SPEAKER_01:It's true. And even when it's not necessarily a nice uh day out, nice weather, you you might have a good light.
SPEAKER_00:So you have 33 hectare in in production at Anthonique. You're a certified organic.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:You have uh Merlot, Cabernet, Cabernet Franc and Petit Vadeau as well. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:And more recently Bouiselet.
SPEAKER_00:Buisselet, yes. So you have these classical cépage for Bordeaux. And then you make the wine that is a little more futuristic and and forward thinking in terms of Bordeaux because you are not a hundred percent new oak. You utilize different vessels, you ferment partially in concrete. Could you walk us through a vinification? Like what you do?
SPEAKER_01:So in the cellar, we have uh so we have different tanks. Most of them are concrete tanks, as you said. Uh half of our concrete tanks are brute, uh, and the other half is uh covered with uh epoxy, uh I don't know. Epoxy lined. Yeah, exactly. And then we also have uh stainless steel uh tanks uh that we uh usually uh use for blending purposes. Uh so vinification is in the concrete tanks. What we do is we try and harvest each plot in one tank. If there is not enough yield in uh this specific plot to fill up a tank, uh, and we have different sizes of tanks, then we complete with another plot, the same um varietal and uh of similar similar maturity and similar uh quality. The reason we do that is we want really to separate the plots for fermentation and to have the choice later on in between the tanks uh then we blend. Uh something that not every everybody does, but it's pretty common in in Bordeaux, we blend before aging. Um so by November, um I can already tell you in L'Estage d'Arquet Grand Peugeot, you will have uh 91% Cabane et Sauvignon and 9% Merlot. In Anthony, you will have uh 76% Merlot and uh I don't know 13% Caban et Sauvignon, then Cabernet Franc, then a bit of petit verdeau. We already know that just after fermentation when we blend. And then uh we age the wines, as you said, in uh in French oak barrel, but also in uh terracotta amphora. Uh we have this terracotta amphora from uh Tava, uh Tava producer in Italy, really well known uh for managing the cooking of the terracotta. And that's what we're looking for. We you you don't want to have um a terracotta that's overcooked and doesn't let any oxygen through, otherwise you will you would have a reductive uh aging. And if it's uh undercooked, then you will have way too much oxygen, you might lose wine, it's getting messy. Does emphora that they are uh cooked in a way that uh they replicate the microoxygenation of the barrel. So depending on the wine, uh we have uh more uh or less of the volume that's age in Aphora. Lestage is uh 40%, Antonic is between 10 and 20 percent. Then the uh the rest is in in French oak barrels. For Anthonique is uh it's classical at this point, uh 225 litres uh with uh renewing of a third every year. Uh so we have a third uh new barrel, a third one year, and a third two years. Uh and that's generally every year the case. Some some vintage we have a smaller yield, so we need to adapt a bit, but that's uh that's the general rule. For l'estage d'Arquier, we made the decision to only have new oak, but we don't want to have wines that are over oaking. So what we decided to do is take uh demi-mue, so 500 liters barrels, uh, the burgundy barrel, and have only new oak. And so 60% of this new oak in 500 uh liters, and then 40% of fenfora is a great match because you preserve the fruit and at the same time you have the super high quality uh oak intake.
SPEAKER_00:Teo, I would like to decode Bordeaux for everybody. Because yeah, it's not actually that easy to do. A lot of people talk about enprimer, and a lot of people talk about Bordeaux pricing, and a lot of people talk about the plus. And I imagine that some people actually don't know what that means. So let's talk about what exactly enprimeur is and the plus. Knowing that you're not a part of the floss.
SPEAKER_01:No, exactly. We're not we're not selling on the plus. We used to work a tiny bit with négociant, never a lot. So we never really have been on the place, which doesn't mean that we never sold en primer. Actually, we sell most of our uh wine en primer. You don't have to be on the place to sell en primer. Great. Let's define what is on primer. So when you buy a wine enprimer, it means you're buying the vintage that's still aging, the pre-buy, uh pre-sale. So for example, the vintage we just harvested 2025 will uh will have its on primer campaign in April of 2026. It will be aging at the time. And then it will be uh available for delivery uh a year or a year and a half after that, so in 2027. The whole point of uh on primer is to help wineries finance the winemaking. We have to realize that before wine is made, uh before we harvest and after we harvest, there is there is a lot of uh investment going on again with the 2025 vintage. We start pruning the vine uh in winter of 2024, and then uh in the spring of 2025, we have a lot of work to do in the vine, and then in the summer as well. Uh so les travaux en verre, uh all of this is a lot of investment, and then we uh we go to harvest September 2025, we'll pay a lot of people to pick up the grapes, then we have to vinify, um, and then we need to age the wine. So we we buy barrels, we have our amphora, and that's another 12 months, and then uh we bottle, and then the wine is available for delivery. So that's two and a half years in the making. So imprimeur is a way to get money earlier. Uh and so that's how uh it was um what it was used for at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:The brilliance of this is that it would support a winery, you would be able to pre-sell your wine before it's in bottle, and it created a momentum in that people on the other side, that's this could be negative at times, it becomes an investment opportunity. So people started betting on which things would be worth more by the time they were released or worth more over time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely, because when you buy a wine enprimer, obviously you you help the winery that but at the same time you get you get a better pricing. And uh when you're uh a wine merchant, for example, or uh even uh a consumer, you you buy this wine at a uh at a specific price that is uh that is lower, but you uh you can also sell sell it again straight away, even if you don't have the wine yet, you you haven't received it uh yet, but you can uh so the the wine machine, that's what they do, they buy on primer and then they sell some of it on primer as well. And then when the g the wine gets delivered to them, they deliver to the to the clients.
SPEAKER_00:If someone were able to pre-buy Taylor Swift tickets, for instance, at a certain price, and then the new album comes out or some new news or she's been proposed to or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:And it's a great hit.
SPEAKER_00:It's a great hit. You're able to, in the meantime, before even the concert, sell the tickets for probably more money. You don't even have them yet. Or you could uh hold on to them and have an incredible experience. So the on-premmer system is essentially it's a pre-buying system, a pre-commitment system that I just put through the lens of Taylor Swift. The upside is it's great because it supports the operating of a winery. And then on the other hand, it created a marketplace. I think it's very important what you just said earlier, which is that you don't have to be on the plus to be on premier. And so many offers in the US, to your point, will say these are on-premur and it'll be a better price, and then later you could see higher prices or another on-premere price that's different because someone had traded their stake in a wine with someone else. Meaning we've created a lot of different price spectrum on on-premur wines. Is there anything else that we should know about on-premere?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, it's not uh because you bought a wine enprimer that you got really the best price. And that's that's the big problem right now. Usually when you would buy a wine enprimer, then uh it gains value and um you make a margin or at least you have value for your money. Uh but right now some wines are getting at a price deliverable that's the same as on-premur or even under the on-premor price because the system is not working really well. Um some uh on-premmer campaigns are not going well, like the 2024 campaign, uh uh a lot of uh a lot of wineries on the place did not sell what they were uh expecting, but they still need the money to finance the activity. So yeah, the the the system is a bit uh shaky.
SPEAKER_00:It's under stress. It's predicated on the idea of when the times are good, you're selling things out well ahead of time. But when times are tough and under stress, or maybe the pricing has gone to a price position that's unsustainable, it's too high for people to actually buy, you get leftovers, and that creates stress, which is not a news story. I think people have heard this about uh Bordeaux, and Bordeaux's not the only thing that does on premier, obviously, but to your point when people say that on premier the prices are down 30% at the top of wines, what does that say to you?
SPEAKER_01:It's it's Binances, there is a bubble, there is a crash.
SPEAKER_00:Um It creates a commodified element. I'm not saying that on premier is bad. In fact, it's just part of the wine business. Committing to things before they're here is a very typical thing to do. But at the level that some of the on premier, especially when you get into the first growths and some of these other houses, it becomes a question of banking because we're talking about a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What is the plus? It's not a place, right?
SPEAKER_01:Used to be. There is a neighborhood in uh in Bordeaux, uh Le Chartrons. Uh used to be what the the negotiant were. Uh what'd you say, the the river, the estuary? Uh and all of the boats would go uh and and take the the wines from there to to the Netherlands, to Germany, to yeah. So no, there there was it was a place. It's not a place anymore.
SPEAKER_00:So it's a virtual marketplace. It's a marketplace for for selling wine, where a Bordeaux chateau tell me when I'm when I go wrong. A Bordeaux property brings their wine via courtier to the negotiator. Which is maybe they were blenders back in the day, maybe there are people that keep these first gross in a warehouse and then sell them to a bunch of wholesalers in the US and retailers. That's essentially the system, correct?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What's the purpose of the system? Like why did they do it originally?
SPEAKER_01:To make things easier. So that the winemaker could focus on making its wine and um uh and then you have another person commercializing it. Yeah. That's the the purpose. The downside is you could the the customer or the consumer from the winemaker. Some some wineries that are 100% on the plus, they don't know where the wines go, um, at what price it will be resold, uh, they don't know who who is their distributors in uh in different countries. And so when the the negotiant drops them because uh it has a problem, um then they are naked in a way that they could they can't commercialize the the wine.
SPEAKER_00:It's going to the negotiant, which then sells it to wholesalers, and then they sell it to restaurants and retailers. Or in some cases, retailers buy it from the negotiant directly. And then you have this dispersed and very disconnected because then it has to go from the wholesaler. It's it's very there are many layers to it. At its best, when it's rolling, it's friggin' awesome. Your wine's selling out, you can focus on making wine and making the best possible product, and then someone else takes care of the sales. At its worst, you get high and low prices in the same place. So you don't want that. You you want a like a price position that's pretty similar across all the places that the negotiants sell to. At its worst, you get extreme disconnection, you get weird pricing, everybody has everything. And it starts to become under stress.
SPEAKER_01:A system like that, so a complicated system as the the Bordeaux Place, with uh another complicated system that's uh wine business or alcohol business in the States, uh where you have an importer, uh distributor, a retailer, and and so many intermediaries uh between us wine producer and and the end consumer. That's so many occasions for the price to go weird, uh for so it's um too too complicated system in uh linked to the other. But when we work with you, the maison, uh we are working as the producer directly with the importer.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is while not easy to do, it's really our way, and I'm thankful that it's your way too. It takes a lot of guts and it takes time because I think one of the pictures of the Bordeaux market that I would like to change over time is that people are addicted to the same names, and because of the commodification, it's very, very price focused. So you have name and price focus in an area where it becomes sometimes very challenging to cut through that. It's a it's a long-term project, which I I'm passionate about. This is what I want to do. This is not the first time, and we've done this with many different wineries, and no one knew what chocolate was, frankly. But it's it's really a David and versus Goliath situation. I hope people understand that with all this complication, Chateau Anthonique and Lestage work incredibly well in the vineyards, very good people, make very honest wines that we bring to market, and luckily we have a lot of great distributors. They bring to people and they make a mark when they can. And that's that's really important to talk about the honesty, because oftentimes we get a little lost in the business of it.
SPEAKER_01:And as as you said uh about the price focus, if we if we manage to remove the focus on price from the equation, meaning if you buy all wine through the maison, you know you don't have to to check all over the internet to see if there is a better price, but then it makes things simpler.
SPEAKER_00:What's the mark you're trying to make at Anthony Can Lestage in Bordeaux? What's the thing you want with your properties to say in Bordeaux?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, really humbly, we are trying to um to make what we can to have um a project that's sustainable. Um and sustainable meaning we want to do good for um for people that are around, um so for our workers, uh for our neighbors, but we want to do it for as long as possible. With what we are doing, sometimes we we take risks. It doesn't mean really anything if in the end uh we run out of business. So we try to do what we can at our scale.
SPEAKER_00:Uh so that's what we are trying to do. Thank you for that. I really appreciate you being here. And I I'm thankful to represent Lestage and Anthonique, estates that are humbly trying to challenge in a positive way and change minds about Bordeaux and farming and Melissa Medoc. I appreciate your work. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Royan.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much for listening to the Perone cast. I'm your host, Ryan Looper. Big gratitude and appreciation to today's guests, the full team at Demaison, all of our producers and all of you. If you want to keep track, hit follow on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast platform, or follow us on the Instagram at Demaison Selections. And remember, if you find the Perone, it's Demaison.
