The 16th episode of the Wine Makers Show takes us to meet Caroline Decoster of Château Fleur Cardinale. Here’s a fascinating interview at the heart of a family now rooted in wine. Once you’ve listened to this episode, a bottle of Château Fleur Cardinale in your wine cellar will hold no more secrets!
Can you start by introducing yourself?
My name is Caroline Decoster. I’m part of the Decoster family, which owns Château Fleur Cardinale in Saint Émilion. The Château belongs to my parents-in-law, who arrived here in 2001. They come from another life, since they’re from Limoges, like my husband, their son. That’s actually when I met my husband, since we’ve been together for about 20 years. I met them in Limoges.
How did you get into wine?
To be more precise, it was my husband’s parents who got into wine first. I met my husband when we were in our final year of school. I remember a day in 2001. I was waiting for Ludovic at his parents’ place. To keep the two of us occupied, she showed me the plans for the Fleur Cardinale cellar. I was 19: I wasn’t necessarily passionate, but I was polite. I remember looking at the plans. If someone had told me that day: “you see this person, she isn’t just your boyfriend’s mum, she’ll also be your mother-in-law and you’ll work together”. They go off to Saint Émilion. I study in Limoges. Ludovic studies in Angers. I see him again when I leave for the École des Mines in Nantes. Ludovic starts working in the wine world. He does an internship with Jean Luc Thunevin. At the time it’s not a world that interests me. We get married in Saint Émilion and at Fleur Cardinale. I finish my studies and start out working as a junior consultant for companies in the region like EADS, Thales or the CEA. In 2008, a bit infected by my in-laws’ passion, I tell my husband I’d chosen the wrong path and I go back to studying. I take a wine and spirits management and marketing course at Kedge. I then work as a statistician in wine brokerage offices. In 2012, my parents-in-law come to see me and offer me a job with them, particularly on communications. So I leave the brokerage office and go to work with them. It’s pretty funny because the three of us worked together: my husband didn’t work with us. That led to some amusing situations. For example, at tastings, some people would see the brochure and say to me: “it’s crazy how much you look like your mum”. Well, it’s true, but this lady isn’t my mum. In 2015, Ludovic starts wanting to do something else. My mother-in-law then suggests he join us because the technical director of the time was retiring. He learns everything on the ground. Since 2015, the four of us have worked together: eight hands at Fleur Cardinale.
Can you go back over your work as a statistician in a brokerage office?
I arrive at one of the finest brokerage offices in Bordeaux. They have a challenge. The broker is an intermediary with two elements: the en primeur market and the deliverable market. What isn’t sold en primeur is kept in stock. When a client calls a négoce house for a specific wine and the house doesn’t have it, it turns to a broker who’ll source that wine on the marketplace; that is, from the other négoce houses. The broker also has an advisory role with the châteaux and the négoce houses. This fieldwork and knowledge takes time. On top of that, they’re asked for quantitative data. Every time there’s a transaction, a lot of data is available. All this information helps build a great knowledge of the market. This work kept me busy for 3 and a half years. At the time I just wanted to be in wine. It was the chance to meet a lot of people, and right in the middle of the 2008 en primeur campaign in the thick of the financial crisis. I then lived through the boom with the 2009 and 2010 vintages. It’s very interesting to see the châteaux’s strategies, their different ways of operating. Today I work with négoce houses that I therefore know very well.
You then join Fleur Cardinale. Can you tell us about the family’s move to Saint Émilion?
My father-in-law was in porcelain in Limoges. He owned Haviland porcelain. He wanted to retire. One day he realised he had to do something. He’s a very active person. It was then Florence who had the idea of getting into wine. A few years earlier, she’d had a dream. In that dream my father-in-law was walking through the middle of the vines and looked super happy. That dream never left her. One evening, my father-in-law tells her he has nothing to do and that it’s a disaster. My mother-in-law says to him: “we love wine, so what if we made wine?”. She suggests he find an estate and try to see. They visit quite a few vineyards. They arrive in Bordeaux. They choose the right bank because the estates are smaller. So it’s less daunting when you’re starting out. A friend who wasn’t in wine introduces Jean-Luc Thunevin to my father-in-law. My father-in-law realises that Fleur Cardinale is a neighbour of Jean-Luc Thunevin’s estate. He laughs and tells him he knows the file very well, but that it’s 18 hectares with a house. He’d just announced to the bank that he was abandoning the project. So he offered to help my father-in-law buy the estate and to become his consultant. The deal starts to get interesting. My parents-in-law visit and find the place magnificent, the wine sells well because there’s no more stock, and someone was ready to help them. So they buy. The first thing Jean Luc says is that you have to demolish the cellar to rebuild one that allows for plot-by-plot vinification. The new classification comes along. Jean-Luc Thunevin tells us we have to submit an application. So we submit an application and we’re classified. We’re the first in Saint Étienne de Lisse to be classified. You have to picture that we’re at the eastern edge of the appellation. What people didn’t know is that there’s a clay-limestone plateau under our feet. We become the first classified estate in the sector. Jean-Luc isn’t classified at that point, which is surprising since he’s our mentor. He has since reached the classification that suits him, since he’s been a premier B since 2012.
Can we dwell on the classification of Saint Émilion wines?
First, you have to be in the Saint Émilion grand cru appellation, with qualitative criteria that differ from the Saint Émilion appellation. The classification is reviewed every 10 years. The next classification will take place in 2022. It’s a file that any Saint Émilion grand cru can fill in. To be a grand cru classé, you have to present the last ten vintages at a tasting before a committee. The premier grand cru classé ranking is based on the last fifteen vintages. There are other criteria: estate management, reputation, prices. The next applications are to be made in 2021. There’s a first review by an independent committee. Then there’s an on-site visit to check the accuracy of the information.
How did the arrival in 2001 in the wine world go, a bit as an outsider?
People imagine a very closed community, but not at all. Châteaux opened their doors to show my parents-in-law how they worked. At first my parents-in-law didn’t move into the house. At first they came twice a month, then once a week, then they’d stay three days. At one point they decided to move completely. They settled at Fleur Cardinale and never left. My parents-in-law ask the people in place to teach them their trade, they take viticulture courses with François Despagne. Each of them takes a small plot on either side of the house. It was a competition to see who would get the most beautiful plot. The joke my father-in-law often makes is that they grubbed up his plot. Not only were they welcomed by the profession on site, but they were also supported by the in-house team, who saw that they were settling in. That’s also why it works: they saw people who were passionate, who were interested and who were out in the vines.
How did the first vintage go?
The first vintage is 2001 and it isn’t made in the cellar. An argument breaks out on the worksite (that is, on the harvest) and suddenly 10 people leave. So I remember Florence coming to ask us to come and work in the vines. She does the harvest and recounts that she went to bed fully dressed. It’s been better since, we’re organised.
Right now you’re doing a lot of work. What have you changed so far, and what are the next developments for Fleur Cardinale?
When my parents-in-law buy, it was 18 hectares. They built a cellar a bit bigger, sized for 21 hectares. Except that today, Fleur Cardinale is 23.5 hectares. So we need space, particularly to improve barrel ageing. In 2017, after the frost. We took stock. We’d been through a catastrophe. The cellar was empty. We called the architect back to entrust him once again with our cellar so he could carry on his work. That’s what’s happening today. So the cellar is going to be bigger and we want to open up to wine tourism. There’ll be two barrel cellars and an experimental cellar to test new ageing methods. Upstairs, there’ll be a little shop and a space for hosting and a beautiful terrace.
Can you tell me more about Fleur Cardinale’s social media?
When I arrive in 2012, I suggest to my parents-in-law that we create a Facebook page and a Twitter account. At the time there were very, very few châteaux. There was so much to tell. I had friends in towers at La Défense whereas I was in Saint Émilion. So I start posting photos. It catches on well. It’s a kind of diary and I’m still the one who runs the social media today. We talk about everything: ageing potential, food and wine pairings. But also about lots of other things with a large community. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube. We learn things about wine every day because we don’t originally come from this world. On Youtube we make videos about wine. We have a great video on blending, for example.
You don’t sell directly at all?
No, not at all. You can’t ask négociants to sell your wine and also do it yourself.
Do you export a lot?
Yes. It’s more than two thirds of our sales. When my parents-in-law arrived, the wine was sold directly. Jean Luc Thunevin told my father-in-law: you know, you’re going to concentrate first on making good wine. There’s a system in Bordeaux that’s great for that. It was perfect for my parents-in-law. So since 2001, we sell through the place de Bordeaux in 60 countries. When you’re on your own, you can’t go and sell wine in the depths of Vietnam. We still travel a lot to promote our wines.
Do you have a few figures on Fleur Cardinale?
We make around 110,000 bottles a year. We have a second wine that’s going to arrive with the 2018 vintage. There’s another estate called Château Croix Cardinale with 4.5 hectares of production. And two years ago, we took over 2.5 hectares to plant white. Château Croix Cardinale was a great opportunity. The vines touch those of Croix Cardinale. The cellars are different. The teams are the same. The white wine of Fleur Cardinale will be vinified in the Croix Cardinale cellar.
Are you putting in place environmental protection measures in the context of global warming?
Yes, and it’s really the right year to talk about it. First, to put things in context, we’ve been committed to environmental certifications since 2012. We’re the first to be affected by global warming. These environmental certifications are very good, but they remain at the estate level. We felt we needed to go further. Two weeks ago, Ludovic signed a partnership with the company Reforest’Action. We have a partnership whereby for each case of wine sold, a tree is planted. Environmental certifications are very good at the estate level, but you also have to take our actions into account. So we’re going to plant 10,000 trees a year in Tanzania. It’s a project that really matters to us. In parallel we’re working on a social certification. It’s very important to us to take everyone in the value chain into account. So we’re waiting for the CSR certification to show that we’re committed in that area. Once again, you have to be consistent. Our bottle is lighter, we’re dropping the gilding, we’re dropping certain types of ink and we’re turning to responsible paper. We really want to go all the way on this point.
How do you organise yourselves to work as a family? Do you manage to talk about other things?
When I started working with my parents-in-law, we found a good balance. In 2015, Ludovic asked me what I thought about us working together. I told myself: “he’s going to come, but I hope it goes well”. Working as a couple is something else. In the end we all have lunch together every day and it’s great. On the other hand, the difficulty comes from separating work life and personal life. We’re constantly flat out. Given the more than unstable context, it takes up a lot of our conversations. We’re very complementary, we don’t step on each other’s toes.
Do you manage to do anything else on the side?
We were at a restaurant with my daughters, aged 6 and 9, the other day. We asked them what they wanted to do. They answered teacher and vet. Laughing, we said to them “well then, you don’t want to do what we do?”. The youngest replies “when you’re a winemaker you never see your children”. They sense that it’s more than a job, it’s a life. That’s what’s wonderful when you’re a winemaker. You work for yourself, but you also work for those who’ll come after. The relationship with time when you’re a winemaker is incredible. You’re a winemaker and you’re in every timeframe: you have one eye on the past, one on the everyday and one on the future. It’s a trade of time: the vine has a defined cycle, the wine evolves with time. On this subject, listen to the podcast episode with Krystel Lepresle.
I’d be curious to hear your view on women and wine
There have always been women for the detailed work in the vines. There have always been women in the world of wine. Now, there need to be more of them, of course, in positions of responsibility. It’s not necessarily difficult for a woman to start out in wine. However, there are always clichés. When you start out in wine, people immediately assume you do communications or marketing. They often doubt your technical skills.
What’s next for you? Do you see yourself staying at Fleur Cardinale?
Yes. Clearly. You can’t give up the vine. It grabs you in the gut. I can’t see myself doing anything else. We work in contact with nature, I get the chance to travel, to make a product that makes people dream. Editor’s note: I’m taking this moment to thank Coralie de Bouard, who put us in touch.
Do you have a wine book to recommend to me?
The first one that comes to mind is Elixirs by Jane Anson. It’s always sitting on the coffee table at Fleur Cardinale. She wrote an incredible book on the grands crus classés of the Médoc. It’s a very beautiful book and very interesting.
Do you have a recent favourite tasting?
A very recent one, yes, since I have a tasting club with friends. The theme was “white wines from cold countries”. We came across a Riesling from Trimbach, cuvée Frédéric Émile and it was delicious.
Who should I interview in upcoming episodes?
It would be a friend. She’s great. It’s Agathe Portail. She’s a writer and wrote “l’année du gel”. My husband read it. She’s a great girl. Her book is a crime mystery set in wine estates in the Entre-deux-Mers after the 2017 frost. To follow Château Fleur Cardinale:
