Unconventional, inspired countryman, Pierre Chariol, fifth generation of Château de Lescours at Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens, boasts his difference. He defends a wine at his image, unbiased, obvious, and from the top his defense tower, he keeps an eye on the future Saint-Emilion classification …
First son in a family of 7 children, he chose to follow the path of his forebearers at the age of 16. He did not like school, he preferred to walk off the beaten tracks, the freedom of summertime. His passion was to become a farmer, a wine grower, hunting and fishing, observe the stars, the grapes, the mushrooms and anthills. It is true that at that time they used to live an easy life of plenty, “we used to take the Concorde to go to the US, importers picked us up in limousines, and we sold them 95% of our production, i.e. 250,000 bottles … And one day, everything stopped, in 1981, the dollar dropped, our importer went bankrupt, the new one let us down”, Pierre Chariol reminds. When his father died in 1989, Pierre was 30, with bailiffs knocking at his door everyday and a shabby château richly covered with brambles. He needed a lot to absorb the debts of this “poisoned legacy” … and a great deal of courage.
But nowadays they are things of the past. Château de Lescours consists of 8 hectares of vines, 45,000 bottles a year with 2 labels, 'Château de Lescours' and 'L de Lescours' (2 to 3,000 bottles a year), a château from the 14th-century with a bed and breakfast, two peacocks, chickens, and 80 hectares of forests, ponds, clearings and labyrinths, “a little nature reserve”, his paradise.
As for the wine that he keeps on crafting, it is still the same, the one that has always meticulously turned its back to the trends. Here, no excessive woodiness, nor over-ripening. He wants to make a fair wine. “Ruby-red at birth, onion peel in its youth and tile-red after ageing”. He loves “the fruitiness, the structure, the suppleness and complexity of the wines”, but what he loves above all is to make a wine in his image, a revolutionary who lives in a castle, standing firm and determined in front of sometimes disembodied owners of houses of cards. He is not one of those who despise you, but of those who come at your encounter, open and welcoming. That is how he defines his wine, a wine of encounters, of feasts, happy, with an extra touch of elegance, that time softens.
But it also is a wine that tells the authenticity of his land. The one he was born and raised on. Where he spends most of his time. Pruning, removing unwanted shoots, observing … “Here we earth up and down twice a year, we loosen the soils, I want no blade of grass in my vineyard, certainly not before May 25 when it can still freeze … When the time of late spring frost is past, the wine grower can breathe. I follow the rule and it works. Thanks to that, in 2017 only 3% of my vines have frozen whereas others have lost everything”. The production is now sold in Japan, the United States and in France (60%), to individuals. A strategy he continues to develop through wine tourism and a future reception room above the vathouse. But he has another project close to his heart. Before he passes the reins down to his children Pierre-Jean and Lucie, he intends to present Château de Lescours at the next decennial classification of the Saint-Emilion wines in 2022 to get the rank of Grand Cru Classé. New investments in the cellar are scheduled. So mind the outmoded rankings and antediluvian prejudices, Château de Lescours has not finished writing its history
Bénédicte Chapard
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