Monday, 18 July 2016 13:18

Terroir’s fifth tenet

Written by 
Exceptional winemaker, Luc Desbonnets. Exceptional winemaker, Luc Desbonnets.

The four energies that go into creating terroir are well renowned. They are; geological, climatic, vine and human.

But for Waiheke Island winemaker Luc Desbonnets, there is a fifth, less generally appreciated tenet – that of spirituality of site. Or whenua, as he refers to it.

Desbonnets may well be on to something, given in the past few years he has created 24 wines that have been rated as exceptional by Lisa Perrotti-Brown, Robert Parker Junior Master Taster. To have 24 wines achieve this highly on the Robert Parker 100 point wine rating system is an outstanding achievement – even more so when you discover that those 24 exceptional rankings are from a total of only 26 red wines made by Desbonnets from 2005 to 2012. There could be even more to come, given he believes 2013 to 2015 are a trio of potentially great vintages for Waiheke.

With a French father and Kiwi mother, the young Desbonnets almost fell into the world of wine accidentally. Having studied business at Massey, he travelled to France in order to learn the language. At the end of that period, unsure what to do with himself, he ended up working for food and board at a small vineyard in the Loire Valley. But it wasn't until he went to work for an export office in the Rhone Valley, that sent him on a wine tasting course, that his eyes opened to the world of wine itself.

"One of the guys on the course was the champion sommelier from Belgium and in blind tastings he could describe the wine right down to the vintage, the winemaker and the Châteaux or property. At that stage I didn't know what I was tasting. It made me curious. How does this occur, how does taste come down to a piece of earth and how can you identify that? It hooked me in."

What followed was a two year course in viticulture and oenology, in Bordeaux, followed by years of winemaking throughout Europe and the new world. In 1998 he finally came home to New Zealand, and spent two years working in the Wairarapa. In 2000 he moved to Waiheke Island where he helped what is now known as Man O War, developing vineyards. A few years later he established his own contracting business, where he helped find sites and establish vineyards, as well as contracting his winemaking services out. In 2005 he bought his own plot of land and planted it out the following year. Frenchmans Hill Estate and Exaptrius were born and it is these wines that are turning heads. A rich Bordeaux blend and Rhone like Syrah style reds, that reflect their unique environment and the technical skills of Desbonnets winegrowing. Although he is the last to say that winemaking is what makes a wine great.

"When I worked (in France) surrounded by some of the great Châteaux I realised it was all about expressing a place. It was more about non intervention, being technically astute but not interfering with what the land had provided.

"To me it is more about growing wine than making a wine. Your wine grows on the vines and it is not about seeing vines as just growing grapes."

Just like areas within Bordeaux, Waiheke offers something special to the vines, Desbonnets says. The varied topography ensures there are a lot of different options, despite the area being an Island, rather than a major land mass.

"It has a variation of soils, and is what is described as a rotten rock, or highly weathered rock. It is the result of volcanic upwelling, which has then been windblown for millions of years."

Despite having plenty of minerals, apart from lime, the soil is described by Desbonnets as being "highly impoverished", which makes it ideal for viticulture. Well it does if you do your homework he says.

"It is important to have an appropriate site selection and then decide according to the site, what you are going to grow there. There are a lot of people who came undone in the early pioneering days, when they weren't matching the wines with the site. It is a place you need to be careful. The potential for quality is there but you have to work to get that. I don't think it is an environment for everyone, you do need some experience and need to be very technical in a long and continuous chain of decisions to get it right."

Building a relationship with the site is vitally important in the creation of great wine he says, and that takes time.

"When you buy a site you are often unaware of the history. But over time you start to get an almost spiritual understanding of the land you are working on. The French are very strong on terroir, the combination of the four key energies; earth, climate, vine and human. I think spirituality that comes from understanding the history of the land is an integral part of that combination of energies. As a winemaker, viticulturist and landowner it has given me a lot of motivation to honour the past and the present and look to the future as well."

There is also motivation to share the end result of the years of hard work.

"Because at the end of the day, we are making wine not only to express ourselves as technicians and winemakers, but to express a place and all the energy that we gather from that place."

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