Environmental Initiative of 2024: The Vineyard of Tomorrow at Larrivet Haut-Brion

Extremely tough to decide the environmental initiative of the year, as there have been a number of exceptional undertakings from châteaux around Bordeaux over 2024 – the result of at least a decade of this region taking increasingly high-profile and important steps towards ensuring the sustainability of its vineyards.

The short circuit wine at Château Dauzac is one particularly interesting initiative that is on its way for 2025. Called Cuvée Neutre Carbonne, it is a wine from a single plot of Cabernet Sauvignon that has been farmed since February 2023 under the watchful eye of Bioboon Agrology, a southwestern France company that specialises in regenerative agriculture. All vine treatments are 100% natural origin that stimulate the plant’s defences and improve the biological life of the soils. This inaugural 2023 vintage of Cuvée Neutre Carbonne will be released in June 2025 after 15 months ageing in barrel, in a  second-life bottle (meaning it previously contained wine, then fully sterilised and made ready for reuse, using a local company based near Langon). The bottle will be closed with vegetable wax rather than capsules – and distributed locally to keep environmental impact down even further.

A similar project has been launched this month, December 2024, by Vignobles Dourthe, with its Dourthe cuvée Promesse. Again, this is a wine in a returnable bottle (within France), in collaboration with Bout à Bout, a company that specialises in bottle reuse and is aiming to develop locations around France as an alternative to recycling, which remains energy-intensive (France has a few of these companies now, including Rebooteille and Locaverre).

Dourthe’s returnable bottle programme is expected to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 79% and cut water consumption by a third compared to producing new bottles. The bottle features an FSC recycled paper label, no capsule, and a national deposit symbol for easy identification and return at collection points.

Both exceptional projects, and just a few among many – Château Palmer‘s move towards a ‘self-sufficient, circular farm, turning away from monocultures to return to a more traditional mixed system of crop and livestock farming’ is setting the conversation among classified 1855 estates, and focusing squarely on soil health with minimum intervention in the vineyards. You can find similarly inspirational projects at Pontet Canet, Lafite Rothschild, Cheval Blanc and others, but Palmer is doing a fantastic job of articulating just how much this reinvention is needed across Bordeaux – and the benefits that await the châteaux that take this step.

In the end, however, we have decided to highlight a project in Pessac Léognan that shows both scale and ambition, aimed at tackling the ‘climate challenges of tomorrow’.

The project is taking place at Château Larrivet Haut-Brion in the commune of Léognan, and provides an important example of how the definition of truly fine wine is evolving.

Larrivet Haut-Brion was bought by Philippe Gervoson in 1987, at which point the vineyard was 17ha. Today it stands at 65ha, replanted on their own land – a reflection of a wider reality of the major châteaux of Bordeaux over recent years, where they are increasing their footprint of land by either purchasing neighbouring properties (think La Tour Carnet) or expanding within their own existing land (Haut-Batailley being a good example).

In this particular case, the Gervosons (Philippe has today been joined by his three daughters) bought a section of Château Haut Lagrange, a neighbouring Pessac Léognan estate created by Francis Boutemy in 1989. The acquisition added 17% to their overall vineyard size, but none of the extra vines produced grapes that were of high enough quality to be used in the main estate wine.

‘It was an exceptionally well located property on great gravel terroir,’ director Bruno Lemoine says, ‘but we found that the plantings had been made with quantity of production in mind rather than with the sensibility and climate awareness of today, and we decided to keep the harvest for (2nd wine) Les Demoiselles’.

Meanwhile Lemoine, an agricultural engineer himself, together with consultant Stéphane Derenoncourt, winemaker François Godichon and cellar master Charlotte Mignon began looking at ways to bring balance to the vineyard. They redid everything – a soil study immediately after purchase in 2010, adding drainage, changing rootstocks and grape varieties, as well as methods of pruning, trellising and canopy cover.

In the end, in 2020, they decided to simply pull it all up and start again.

‘We gave it ten years, but we found that although the work we did certainly improved the resulting grapes, it just didn’t go far enough,’ says Lemoine. ‘Instead, we took the opportunity to entirely reimagine what our vineyard could be’.

The resulting project, which encompasses 15ha of parkland, 12ha of vines, 12ha of forests of their own (right next to those of Smith Haut-Lafitte that take the surrounding forest up to 70ha), along with lakes, ponds and wetlands, will be put in place over the next 15 to 20 years.

‘It’s been helpful for me to remember lessons learnt in Cognac,’ says Lemoine, ‘where I worked before moving to Bordeaux. The houses there routinely assemble eaux de vie made by two or three generations of cellar masters before the current one. Planting vines in Bordeaux is no different. We have to think 20 to 50 years ahead. We are planting the future vineyard – and we have to make choices today based on what we believe will be the most pressing issues tomorrow’.

As with Château Dauzac, they looked to partnerships and experts for inspiration – visiting, Martell in Cognac and Cheval Blanc here in Bordeaux for examples of best practise, working with specialists in flora and fauna, in sustainable farming and biodiversity, most notably local company Arbres et Paysages and the Biosphères Group that specialises in ecosystem restoration. The plans encompass a migratory zone for birds, and a nature reserve, and an agroforestry project.

Even here, this particular project stands out. Where most of the agroforestry projects in Bordeaux have meant adapting existing vineyards, here they are starting from scratch, which is partly what makes the work so instructive for other estates. On a visit to this 12ha fledgling plot earlier this year, it was clear that things are still in the early days, but they are taking shape. No vines have yet gone in, as the first steps are about encouraging biodiversity, meaning 3,000 trees have already gone in.

Hedgerows that surround the vineyard are already planted, with 20 different species of trees and plants, a mix of those already present on the estate such as oak, walnut, elderflower and honeysuckle, or others selected to be complementary, and to play a specific role in the ecosystem, and at all points, a minimum of 10% of the surface will be given over to things other than vines. Vines – Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec – will be planted in 2025 and 2026, with the aim of getting the first harvest sometime between 2028 and 2030.

The choice of new plantings is fascinating – and most specifically a tree that is considered ‘a species of the future’, in particular because of its ability to store CO2 more rapidly than other trees. The paulownia (paulownia elongata its Latin name) is a fast-growing tree, forming honeycomb-like cells and often reaching heights of 15 to 20 metres within a few years. It creates large leaves that allow shade, but also allow diffused sunlight through to the vines, and capture ten times as much carbon than most trees. The paulownia can withstand higher temperatures also, with evaporation and transpiration continuing right up to 38C.

As far as I know, Larrivet is the first estate in Bordeaux to be planting this tree, with an alley of paulownia planned every 25 rows of vines. The wood will then be reused to make Larrivet Haut-Brion’s wine cases.

‘The roots also go very deep, and head vertically down so will not be in competition with the vine, at least in theory,’ says Mignon. ‘We would like to see it become the emblem of the estate, which is why we intend to use it for wine cases also’.

On the rest of the plot, the density of vines will be reduced from 7,700v/ha down to 6,500v/ha from 7,700v/ha, as a further tool to combat global warming and reducing the competition for water.

‘It’s an exciting and important project,’ says Lemoine. ‘But it’s a gamble. We don’t know that it will work.’