In 2006 an old friend of mine, Fabrice Domercq, asked me if I'd be interested in helping him make some wine in Bordeaux. His mother had bought a house which came with a vineyard with Merlot and some fifty-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon already established. With the help of Paul Bordes, we began the process of making a wine. We picked only Merlot the first year, sorted the grapes by hand, and aged the wine in a completely neutral way in an inox vat. We made about 1600 bottles, not to have too much to begin with. It was a good start, nothing spectacular but very drinkable.
In 2008 we started using oak barrels to age some of the wine and again everything was done by hand. We probably overdid the oak ageing on what had been a less-than-perfect growing season. But 2009 was a stellar year for Bordeaux, and our wine started to be a serious one, with a quite particular and identifiable character.
Extracted from A Book of Things by Jasper Morrison (Lars Müller Publishers, 2015)
