For this 19th episode of the Wine Makers Show, we set off to meet Florence Cathiard, owner of the iconic Château Smith Haut Lafitte. That name surely rings a bell and won’t leave you indifferent. Discover the history of the estate and the major projects that Florence, and her teams, have carried out since buying the château in December 1990.
Can you introduce yourself?
I’m Florence Cathiard. For 30 years, I’ve had the good fortune to be the owner, with my husband Daniel, of this superb estate at the heart of which you’re interviewing me right now. I think we’re one of the most visited châteaux in the appellation, for several reasons: the proximity to Bordeaux, the beauty of the place, and the new-luxury side that I proudly champion. I think luxury today is organic, green, certified-organic, biodynamic luxury, which is what we are. The Sources de Caudalie, which are the kingdom of my two daughters, have become the palace of the vines.
You had a life before wine. Why did you choose wine?
It’s a long story that I’ll try to keep short. First of all, I believe the secret of couples who last is perhaps working together, and surely changing your life. I met Daniel when we were on the French ski team. Him on the first team, me as a reserve. We have our claims to fame. We met in those circumstances. What united us was our shared goal of pursuing our studies in parallel. When Daniel had to leave the team, on the death of his father, I followed him a few months later. Then we had a life in business; very demanding but very enriching; while finishing our degrees. It wasn’t a bed of roses, since the shareholders were very frightened by the arrival of the skier, my husband. There were bankers who didn’t follow us, others who pulled out their shares, and all that in the middle of an economic storm. There was a hypermarket to open with big debts, and it was a new kind of retail. We managed to open shops in smaller towns. We really had a fine success, to the point that we went public on the second market. Then we launched a chain of sports shops, Go Sport, which at the time was as fine as Décathlon. After that, things developed differently. At that point, I myself launched an advertising agency, and at the same time, Daniel went public with Go Sport. It went very well because I won the Rossignol skis worldwide account. We were a strong but still small agency, and we got close to an American agency, McCann. It swallowed me up but let me run 6 subsidiaries and I became vice-president. When I argue with my husband, I say that I’m the one who bought the whites. We have 10 hectares of white at Smith Haut Lafitte, against almost 70 hectares of red. One day, we started running into each other at airports. Our family life couldn’t exist any more, and that’s when Daniel told me he was going to sell his businesses. That triggered a big couple crisis, because it was going so well that I didn’t want to believe we were going to change completely. He sold his businesses. In the end, we were very happy to come together on this project. We looked at a few projects, but wine won out. Daniel remembered that he’d grown up above his grandfather’s barrels in the family home above Grenoble. We hesitated between Burgundy and Bordeaux. I was very drawn to the red wines of Bordeaux because it was the only alcohol we were allowed to drink on the French ski team. I should say that when, like me, you’re rather small and you’re forced to ski terrifying races on skis 2.15m long, you were very scared. The night before the downhill we were very scared and we slept very badly. By drinking a glass of wine of red Bordeaux, undoubtedly the most digestible alcohol in the world, we slept like logs. We didn’t know much about wine, but on arriving here we came across a Monsieur Vieilles Vignes. He was a consultant for a big bank and advised us on a great terroir. We broke the piggy bank to buy this great terroir, mistreated but very beautiful, because it’s always those old Günzian gravels that make for our pride and our very particular aroma. Smith Haut Lafitte didn’t have the same look as it does today.
Can we go back exactly to the changes you made at Smith Haut Lafitte?
We restored everything. The base of the first tower dates back 655 years. It’s the earliest record we have of the château. We still have a few bottles from 1878 that are still entirely pleasant, with a fine bouquet. We changed everything. The estate manager who was there wanted to fill the vats more. We got rid of all that equipment. Daniel had already read all of Émile Peynaud’s books. He knew you couldn’t make a great wine with that kind of equipment, designed to make quantity rather than quality. It was very hard. We arrived in 1990 after the harvest but before the blending. Then in 1991 we had frost like all of Bordeaux. In 1992 it did nothing but rain. I thought we were really starting to go bankrupt. In 1993 it improved a little, but not much. In 1994 it improved a little, but I thought we were on the brink of filing for bankruptcy. And 1995, a great wine: a great white, a great red. That’s when we started to build our reputation. On top of that, we’d wanted to be organic from the start, and it was very difficult, since you don’t go from a chemical vineyard to an organic vineyard with a snap of the fingers. We cut out all the vine’s nourishment, which had been drugged on phosphate and fertilisers. The poor vine, like an addict in withdrawal, kept weakening more and more, to the point that we got down to 10 hectolitres per hectare: it was staggering. During that time, we were trying to make an organic compost, but we couldn’t manage it. To make a good organic compost, you need the right recipe. I sometimes tell the story that the most snobbish conversation I ever had was with Prince Charles. I only met him once in my life, but I respect him a lot because he takes very good care of his farm at Highgrove and I love his stone-ground biscuits. I met him at a tasting after his last polo match at Ashpark near London. We had this conversation about horse and cow manure. The manure has to be a mix between the horse, a solar animal, and the cow, a root animal, with the right dose of crushed vine and straw in the middle. He knows it very well, and I was starting to know it too. We learned to master all the tools that let you run an organic vineyard well, but it took us a good ten years. After that, we didn’t necessarily feel the need to get certified. We did it because there was a certain demand, but it’s not an end in itself. In some cases we go much further than certification, and in others it’s odd that, in 2018, you make a great wine by saving half the harvest. You have to go through the vines 16 times. Whereas in 2019, a blessed year, an “armchair harvest”, we went through the vines 4 times. And yet the stamp is the same.
On which points do you go much further on organic?
We go much further than our certification on certain points: first, we try everything. We tried a start-up working with algae, we tried a start-up recommended by our daughter using plants that eat copper. This year we have four very interesting tests: a first one where we let our vine sunbathe; we invested in a Dutch start-up called Free Soil that has supposedly found a way to eliminate copper (watch this space). We did a test where we covered one hectare with straw: when it rains, the rain bounces off the Günzian gravels and the mildew attacks the leaf below: the straw absorbs it and it seems very interesting. Of course, we have our rootstock on the island of Lalande. We work on our own clones. I’m forgetting some, but we do many other things. In short, we try everything. It’s full of lessons, it fascinates us. We’re in love with our teams, who give it back to us. During lockdown, neither the vines nor the cellars stopped. We’ve never had such beautiful vines.
Do all these initiatives you champion on protecting the environment come from the observation that climate change is affecting your vines?
No, we’ve always been like that in the family. My father wanted to call me Nature when I was born. He was a philosophy teacher, but above all he was a great walker. My parents spent all their holidays with a Volkswagen camper van, setting off with nothing and living off fishing and foraging. So it was the Lakes of Connemara, mushrooms at the right time, wild strawberries. I admit that at one point as a teenager I didn’t always agree, but it left deep marks. My daughter Mathilde, in beauty, has perfectly absorbed this dimension because it was my parents who raised her, not us. I’m full of respect for what my two daughters do and I take a great interest in my grandchildren. Mathilde had tamed her hens. I thought she’d do well in wine because she has a very sensitive nose, but she uses it for other things.
You’ve also greatly changed the landscape around you. Can you tell us more about the estate’s architecture?
Delving into the archives, we realised that each owner had left a mark. It didn’t displease us to add our own, in two forms. First, we rebuilt Georges Smith’s orangery. It was a greenhouse that stood on the site of the Sources de Caudalie. He had a star-shaped greenhouse. We turned it into a large tasting room and a large organic vegetable garden. We’re treating ourselves to it right now, in fact, because there’s no one around, whereas usually it’s reserved for the two-Michelin-starred chef. We redid it while staying faithful to the original plans. We changed the cooperage because it was becoming too small. We’re one of three châteaux in Bordeaux to have an in-house cooperage, along with Margaux and Lafite (and Haut-Brion in the summer). My husband had the idea of putting it in a tower. I went and found all the books of a great draughtsman of the bastides of Guyenne and Gascony and all of the Entre-deux-Mers and the beginnings of the Landes. We found a wonderful architect, who really took up the drawings and made a tower out of them that fits well into the landscape. On top of that, the bell we put in tolls the hours but also lets people ring it and make a wish. So we’re going to leave two marks of our time here, and those who succeed us will leave their own in turn. Even so, it’s becoming harder and harder, because you can’t touch the vines. We have two pretty courtyards of honour, one in gravel, the other in lawn, and we don’t really want to touch those either. We also built a discreet cellar for our young vines (I don’t really like saying “second wines” because they’re in no way second). Le Petit Haut Lafitte and Les Hauts de Smith come from young vines and are made in this cellar, which is very slightly energy-positive. It’s in a natural quarry, with green roofs, we have 300 square metres of solar panels. As a result, we were invited, for that but also because we’re the only château to recycle 20 tonnes of CO2 emitted during alcoholic fermentation into 8 tonnes of sodium bicarbonate, to COP21. We all believed in it at the time. Since then, there have been economic pressures. For now we’re very happy with this Atlantic climate. It should stop here: we’re very well as we are. Our wines sometimes reach 14 degrees, but that’s not a problem when it’s well balanced, when the finish is long, we’re happy. For that, nothing must change.
Do other châteaux replicate your experience?
Of course. We talk about it very frankly and very directly with châteaux from other countries. It’s true that the world of grands crus classés is so competitive that we haven’t been able to share much. I’d have liked to share more with Palmer or Pontet-Canet, for example, and perhaps they’d have liked to share with us. You can’t share too much with your peers because this world is very competitive. There are the scores, people’s appreciation, the trips you make, the bonds you build with collectors. It’s long and slow but solid when you have the foundations.
What impact has digital had since you arrived?
Up to now it hasn’t affected our product. Our product, and when I say this to my daughter she gets annoyed, isn’t a tube of cream that can be replicated almost infinitely. Our wine is almost like a birth every year, it’s the work of a whole team. We have an artisanal luxury product. We’re one of the rare companies in the sector to be certified as an Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant of France. We have a lot of quality artisanal works, and we have the biodynamic and phytotherapy side, since we grow our plants in the forest of the five senses, which I invite you to visit. So we didn’t need digital. And then along comes COVID and we take a blow to the head. As we find it hard to lower the price of our wines. Our wines are expensive, they’re by default 40% more expensive than our neighbours because they’re organic. Right now we’re no longer selling a single bottle of wine. We’ve done master classes and Instagram lives with virtual tastings, for example. We don’t want to leave the place de Bordeaux. It has an incredible capillarity. It showcases our wine in more than 50 countries. When you compare with the Napa Valley, even though they’re very successful, they sell almost nothing outside their borders. The most expensive of them come to the place de Bordeaux to have the capillarity that the world envies us.
Can you tell us more about your American adventure?
It’s a slightly strange adventure, because at our age it’s not the kind of thing you launch into. But to keep my balance, I need to keep pedalling, and what keeps me standing are our projects. I think Napa is really starting to challenge us. We toured Napa, and in the end, in November, one property really won us over. It’s the same story as at Smith Haut Lafitte. They were making 600,000 bottles, we’re going to make maybe 80,000. It won’t be the same thing. The estate is surrounded by jungle and old-growth forest. I love being at the heart of overflowing nature. There are species of trees I’ve never seen. We’re lucky to have a spring too. It’s a very beautiful terroir. We didn’t buy the brand because we want to do something completely different. We’ll make our first wine in late 2022, early 2023.
Can we talk a bit about exports?
It’s crucial. We export between 80 and 85% of our production of the first wine. It’s true that the first wine is a bit expensive for France, but we agonise no end over all its elements: the length of the finish, the balance, the wine’s aroma, the tannins, the typicity of the old vines. All that costs a great deal, and we only make a small third as first wine. I recommend tasting our red and our Smith Haut Lafitte white for a special occasion. They’re worth the detour.
The en primeur sales are in a few days.
We’re already very pleased that the en primeur sales are going ahead. It’s underway now, mostly with French buyers. But it’s our négociants who are going to sell for us. The wine is excellent. And it’ll be a bargain, since we’re going to sell it cheaper than the 2018. The 2019 is more like the 2009 or 2015: extremely generous, extremely voluptuous. They’re magnificent wines and it’ll be a bargain. I hope people drank good bottles during lockdown and that they now want to fill up the cellar.
Do you have a book about wine to recommend?
There are several. My husband would tell you about Émile Peynaud, because he’s really the bible of wine. He read them all when we arrived. I read the others. I really liked what Michel Serres wrote about wine because it’s very poetic. I really like what he says about terroir. “From silica, finesse; from limestone, power; from clay, unctuousness… everything comes from the gravels and sands, mingled soil.” There’s a whole poetry that unfolds across his pages. He’d become a friend. So I recommend reading Michel Serres, even if it’s not solely about wine. When he says “don’t cross the vine the way a distracted person would cross the sea, seeing only green where the other would see only blue”, it’s magnificent. You have to learn to read a vine.
Buy Le Contrat Naturel by Michel Serres
Do you have a recent favourite tasting?
This morning’s was interesting. We got together among ourselves and, as with my husband Daniel, we drank all the wines of the Napa Valley. Since we’d finished them, we opened the grands crus. I wanted my teams to enjoy them. We do semi-blind tastings: Smith Haut Lafitte against a premier cru. We opened our 2014 against Haut-Brion, to name it, and well, Haut-Brion was slightly better. But we decided to redo the same tasting in 3 years. We told ourselves we were making the mistake of not decanting our wine: we could have held our own under other tasting conditions. When you look at the lithological maps, our terroir is the same. Except that Haut-Brion has been a true garden for more than half a century. Whereas we’ve been a beautiful organic garden for 10 years. That’s short in the history of wine.
Do you have a person to recommend to me for the upcoming interviews?
It depends who you want to interview. Either someone important in the world of wine. I’d recommend one of our two consultants, with either the great eloquence of Michel Rolland or the discreet but still provocative side of Stéphane Derenoncourt. Otherwise, if you’re looking for a winegrower, why not Jean-Luc Thunevin, or the personality that some find iconoclastic, the one behind Liber Pater.
I have one last question. What would you say to Florence if you had the chance to whisper in her ear when she was on the French ski team?
It’s a bit of a cliché, what I’m going to say, but I think I’d tell her René Char’s line: “Believe in your star, follow your path, and as they watch you, they’ll get used to it.” To go further:
- The château’s website
