On a tour around Bordeaux, we get the chance to meet Thomas Duroux, the general manager of the iconic Château Palmer. A third growth in the official 1855 classification of Bordeaux wines, Château Palmer is an iconic figure of the Bordeaux region. So Wine Makers Show pushes open the doors of this château. In this episode, you’ll discover the career path of its general manager. Enjoy the listen.
Can you start by introducing yourself?
I’ll soon be 50. I was born in Bordeaux, the city where I grew up, but with varied origins. My father is French, from the north of France, and my mother is Italian. So it’s a combination of two highly wine-focused countries. During my studies in Bordeaux and my youth in Bordeaux, I fell in love with the world of wine. That’s why, among other things, I’ve been at the head of Château Palmer since 2004.
How did your passion for wine come about?
It’s the combination of two elements: a first, educational element and a cultural element. The educational element goes back a long way. When I started secondary school in Bordeaux, I was lucky enough to have a truly fascinating biology teacher. I fell in love with the living world. So I decided very early on that my studies would steer towards biology, towards the living world. I went into preparatory classes. It was called bio maths sup and bio maths spé, without really knowing it led towards the agronomy schools. I’d hoped to be good enough to get into Normale Sup, that wasn’t the case, and I did agronomy. Alongside that, when I was a teenager, around 15 or 16, the father of my best friend had a pretty extraordinary cellar. At that age, we wanted to have a few drinks. Rather than going to buy beers at the supermarket, we’d swipe bottles from his father’s cellar. And of course he noticed. His reaction was decisive. One afternoon, we were summoned by his father. He told us he’d worked out that we were swiping bottles of wine from his cellar. That was a huge problem for him, because we were drinking wines without knowing what we were really drinking. So he told us: instead of swiping the wine, we’re going to drink it together. Through him, I discovered all the complexity, the magic of the world of wine, how you could travel through space and time, meet men and women. And it became a real passion. When I had to choose a specialisation during my studies, it was quite naturally that I steered towards viticulture.
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How were the tasting sessions with your friend’s father organised?
It’s a real sharing around a table during a dinner. It’s very oral: you listen to stories, you have sensations. I was able to read up with wine books and a few bibles like Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson. And I’d go off and swot up. And that’s how I built a certain knowledge of the world of wine.
How did your studies go?
Two years of prep, three years of school. Among those three years of study, there’s a year of specialisation in which I was able to study viticulture in much more detail. I rounded all that off with a year of oenology in Bordeaux to get an oenologist’s degree.
What did you do after your degree?
I graduated in 1995 and went off to do a vinification in Italy, in Friuli. At an estate called Vistorta, which belongs to a family called Brandolini d’Adda. They were modest wines but with a bit of ambition. At the time, you had to do military service. I went all out to find a way not to do it and to go and carry out a cooperation placement abroad. I was very lucky to find the opportunity to go to Hungary, in the Tokaj vineyard, very close to the Slovak border. I stayed 16 months and worked for two estates that belonged to French investors. I worked on the issues of wine stabilisation and bottling. The region’s wines are sweet, with residual sugars. So I went to work on these technical problems. The technical director was French, but I very quickly found myself in charge of the bottling centre. We made 2 million bottles a year, which is no small thing. I had a team of 10 Hungarians. It was my first professional experience, but above all a human experience. That first experience was very intense and very rich.
Did you then come back to France?
I came back to France in June 1997. The French investors who ran the two estates in Hungary wanted me to stay with them. It was the négoce house Gamodi. They managed famous names in Pomerol like La Croix Ducasse, but above all Château Clinet. I worked on various subjects. It didn’t last very long. I did spend two months in South Africa to develop a wine range. In June 1998, I left that company and Bordeaux to join the small Mondavi team in Montpellier. The head of that small team is David Pearson. He’d been sent to Montpellier to manage a wine brand: Vichon Méditerranée. They were dedicated to the American market. He’d put together a small team and recruited me as oenologist. At the same time, the Mondavi family wanted to establish themselves more clearly and more decisively in the Languedoc region. So the two ideas were, on the one hand, to build a winery for Vichon and, on the other, to buy a vineyard to make a high-end wine. With David we changed the order of priorities and convinced the two brothers, Tim and Michael, that it was better to establish ourselves first as winemakers. So we looked at what we could buy. There were a few leads. The most serious was Daumas Gassac, with whom we had very advanced discussions. It didn’t come off because Aimé Guibert, a colourful character, got a bit greedy at the end, which closed the door for the Mondavis. We quickly came to the conclusion that we could look for other names, but there aren’t that many of them in the Languedoc, especially back then. So it was perhaps more strategic to create a vineyard from scratch. We found quite a few places with considerable potential. The best way to convince the Mondavis was to offer them a terroir already surrounded by famous names. That’s how the project was born between the vineyards of Daumas Gassac and la Grange des Pères. It was a political battle worthy of Marcel Pagnol. The upshot is that in May 2001, the Mondavis pulled out. They abandoned the project and ended up selling the Vichon brand. My Languedoc adventure came to an end because Tim Mondavi called me in April of that same year. He offered me the role of technical director at Ornellaia in Tuscany. Hard to say no.
Did you report directly to the Mondavi family during your Languedoc adventure?
No, I reported to David Pearson, but since we were a tiny team of three people, exchanges weren’t rare. It was a magical time. We had lots of projects. I was able to work a lot with maps and wander around a lot. I discovered sublime terroirs with very beautiful vines. David and I had it in mind to develop small vineyards here and there because it’s an extraordinary place. It’s a place I got to know well because I wandered around a lot. I keep that region in my heart and I hope it will manage to move forward, because there are magnificent wines. We all assume that Languedoc wines aren’t made to age, so we drink them young even though they’re very powerful. That reminds me that I have two friends who developed a négoce business in the Languedoc. Their company is called H&V. Their idea was to run a négoce operation. I opened a 2001 of theirs two weeks ago. I served it blind to two friends, who shot off like rockets because the wine was magnificent. It had gained a lot in complexity and finesse over time. There’s great potential there, but between potential and recognition, time passes.
You then arrived in Tuscany. How did that adventure go?
I found Ornellaia in very good shape and I hope I left it in an equally excellent state. What’s important to realise is that the first vines planted at Ornellaia date from 1981. When I arrived in 2001, the vines were 20 years old and there was a track record of 15 or 16 vintages. That’s very little on the scale of great wines. I arrived at a very well-run estate. However, it was still searching and had to find its style. My job was to contribute to developing its identity, its history and its style. For three years I ran lots of trials, telling myself that, in any case, there’s no barrier, no limit: the story was still to be written. I had the chance to vinify 2001 as my first vintage. 2001 was a magnificent year in Bolgheri. It was more complicated in 2002 and even more complicated in 2003. I learned a lot and was able to contribute a little to writing a few pages of Ornellaia. This part of Italy and Tuscany is a rare combination of the old world and the new world. The old world because there’s a thousand-year history. And yet the first great wines in Bolgheri date from the 1960s.
You talk about testing lots of things at Ornellaia. Is that still something you can do at Palmer?
Yes, but not at all in the same way. I arrived at Palmer in July 2004. The harvest begins and I work with the technical director of the time. Buoyed by my Italian experience, I push the teams a bit to extract fairly significantly. The technical director looks at me rather dubiously. I quickly realise we’re going the wrong way, so I backtrack and let the technical teams do what they know how to do. It took me a lot of time and observation to evolve Palmer while keeping and respecting what had been built by everyone before me. The objective here is always to understand the style of the estate and to put in place all the elements needed to push that expression ever further. Ornellaia’s pace isn’t Palmer’s pace, and Palmer’s pace isn’t Ornellaia’s pace.
How did your first days at Palmer go? Did you have an objective to reach?
When Palmer’s owners decided to hand me the keys, they took a double gamble. The first was to hand the keys of Palmer to a guy who is, above all, a technician. The second gamble was to hand the keys to a 34-year-old guy, which was uncommon. They showed a great sense of adventure. My first challenge was to justify their choice and make sure they wouldn’t regret it. My mission is very simple. First, don’t damage a growth as prestigious as Palmer. Then go ever further to carry high the expression of this place, which can be summed up as follows: put a terroir, put a vineyard into the unity of a glass. My job isn’t necessarily to be hands-on, but above all to give everyone the means to do their job as well as possible.
Do you have a few key figures on Palmer?
Palmer is an estate of about a hundred hectares in total. Of those 100 hectares, 66 are under vine, 4 are wine-growing terroirs in the vineyard rotation and around 30 hectares are meadows. When all goes well, we produce around 24,000 cases of 12, split into two wines: Château Palmer and Alter Ego. There are around 65 of us to run all of this, to which you have to add the seasonal workers who help us during two big periods: the green work and the harvest.
Why did you accept to come to Palmer?
When you’re offered the chance to head one of the most legendary names in wine, you can’t say no. !Château Palmer
You arrived in the mid-2000s. You must have seen an explosion in the use of digital tools?
It’s a permanent worksite. It started in 2004 when we were using emails. The internet first revolutionised the way we communicate day to day. Digital made it possible to change the way we communicate institutionally: website and social media. Wine apps are developing. I saw all of that explode. We remain a small entity, but it helps us a lot to explain what we do and what our values are. From a production point of view, mapping has been able to change a lot of things on several fronts: the management of terroirs and the agronomic adaptation we can make of them, and we work more and more with GPS units mounted in the tractors that let us work the soils more precisely. The traceability of everything we do has been able to progress a great deal. There’s no more cellar logbook, which is less romantic but devilishly effective. We’re going through a digital revolution and we use it a lot. We also have an app that should make it easier for the consumer to acquire information. It will let an enthusiast have all the information about the bottle they’re tasting; just the thing to properly read a wine label. (Editor’s note: you can add it alongside your wine cellar management app). We have another app to deal with the issue of counterfeiting. Our bottles are protected by a seal in which you find three pieces of information: an alphanumeric code, a QR code and a bubble code generated randomly and non-reproducibly. You can scan this seal and obtain all the information, and the bubble code lets us identify the bottle. That allows us to deal with counterfeiting.
Have you suffered a lot from counterfeiting?
It’s hard to measure, but we’ve come up against it. I’ve found myself in situations where I had fake Palmers in front of me at a tasting. It’s a bit unsettling.
There’s also a lot of talk about wine tourism. Have you seen these developments?
At Palmer we don’t really do wine tourism. Wine tourism is developing an economic activity within an estate around welcoming visitors. There are regions in the world that are very advanced on this: the Napa Valley abroad, champagne in France. Bordeaux is a bit behind, but the momentum is building. We don’t have the ambition to develop an economic activity around welcoming visitors. Our ambition is to give our end customers a moment, a powerful experience. The estate stays open and there’s one private visit a day. It’s more a service than a stand-alone activity. Our objective is to let our customers experience our daily life.
Climate change is going to affect wine. Is that something you anticipate here?
Only Mr Trump could think that global warming doesn’t exist. We see it very widely in the Bordeaux region. Until now it’s been rather favourable to us, with great vintages. That said, there are a few causes for concern, with some moments that are a bit borderline in terms of water supply; we’ve seen alcohol levels rising quite high, particularly on the merlot. We’ve been able to sense some limits in the Merlot’s ripening cycle. Merlot is the most Bordeaux grape variety we use. Great Merlots are very rare, and it’s the grape variety that expresses itself around Bordeaux. It needs a relatively slow ripening cycle. How do we respond to that? The first answer is to be concerned with your carbon footprint. At Palmer, we chose the path of organic farming by giving life back to our soils. We’ve considerably improved our carbon footprint. Second, we’ve adapted the rootstocks to delay the ripening of the Merlot. Third, I’m convinced that living soils with organic matter have a much better capacity to handle climatic events than sterilised soils. So I have good hope that, through our practices, we can manage to counterbalance the excesses of global warming. The last point I want to stress is that if climate change involves a change in the Gulf Stream, the climatic cycle in the Bordeaux region could change completely. In that case, the future of viticulture in Bordeaux could be in danger. So it’s the responsibility of all of us to control the effects of mankind on climate change.
Do you export a lot at Palmer?
Palmer is 80% export. Of that 80%, the United States represents 12%, it’s a big market. Since the introduction of an additional tax, exports to the United States have been heavily slowed. That said, there’s no immediate consequence on the availability of our wines over there because we have stock on site. If it lasts and if it intensifies, the distribution of our wines in that market will come to a dead stop. It’s not a catastrophe for us because there are other markets where demand for our wines is far greater than supply. That said, the United States is a very fine market, if not the finest market in the world, for exporting prestigious wines like ours. I think common sense will eventually win out.
What’s the weight of the other markets?
45% of our sales are made in Europe (with France first, then the United Kingdom and Switzerland). 35% of our sales go to Asia, with Hong Kong and China at the top. North America represents between 15 and 20%. The rest is a bit of South America, Africa and the Middle East. The most mature markets in the world are in Europe, with the United Kingdom and Switzerland, which have a very great knowledge of wines. Japan is a very mature market with immense sophistication. The United States is at a great stage. Hong Kong has become a real platform for the distribution of great wines. China has transformed, with enthusiasts who have an immense wine culture. It remains a gigantic market with enormous potential. There are also markets opening up, such as Vietnam for example.
You said a few words about Africa. Have you seen developments on this continent?
Honestly, it’s not the market I know best. The first country I think of is South Africa because it’s a producer country: so there’s an interest in wine. Then there are the countries with tourism. There’s of course a consumption of lovely wines in the local embassies and ministries.
What does your day-to-day look like today?
When all goes well, it’s doing nothing. In truth I spend morning till night going from one subject to another. I’m an expert in nothing, but I know all the subjects of an estate like Palmer. My job is to imagine the future, to work with the owners on the growth’s strategy and to make sure it’s translated into concrete actions, and to help them when needed. !Château Palmer - sunny exterior
You’ve been at Palmer for nearly 16 years now. What should we wish you for what’s next?
To stay curious and to keep knowing how to take risks. It’s not a question of age but a question of routine. After 16 years, it’s quite tempting to believe you’ve mastered everything, and that’s the biggest risk. An estate like Palmer can’t stop searching, innovating and inventing the future. The path we chose isn’t the simplest one, it’s absolutely fascinating, and we still have a lot to do to go further in the expression of this place.
Do you have a recent favourite tasting?
Two days ago I tasted a wine from the Goisot family, who are in Saint Bris le Vineux near Auxerre. It’s a Pinot Noir from the Côte d’Auxerre, cuvée la Ronce 2015. It was magnificent. It was magnificent.
Do you have a wine book to recommend?
There’s a lot of literature. There’s a wine book I reread not long ago that’s absolutely magnificent. It’s an interview with the founder of modern oenology: Émile Peynaud. It came out 20 years ago and it’s perfect for understanding what oenology brought to the world of wine. It’s “Oenologue dans le siècle”.
Buy this book
If you had someone to recommend for an upcoming interview?
I recommend you go and meet Jean Michel Cazes, owner of Lynch Bages, who has handed the reins to his son. He was a pioneer in Bordeaux in the attention you should pay to wine lovers. He’s not far off 80 and he’s an incredible person. Tribute to those who did the work before everyone else. To follow Château Palmer:
Whether after aerating it or decanting it, you’ll be able to enjoy your tasting of Château Palmer. Whether you’d rather grumer the wine or chew the wine: you’re going to have an exceptional time. Take the chance to make a toast to this interview and to fill in a tasting sheet based on your discoveries! And good news, you can get one for free.
