Profile: Pierre Seillan of Sonoma’s Vérité

by Panos Kakaviatos

• Pierre Seillan born 7 June 1950 in Lauzun, a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France.
• Armagnac Bigorre rugby player in late teens and 20s.
• From 1977 to 1979, Seillan works at Château de Targe in Saumur Champigny for the Pisani-Ferry family, with Madame Pisani-Ferry and her son Edouard.
• In 1998 with Jess Jackson, Seillan inaugurates Vérité. Today Pierre and his daughter Hélène direct winemaking.
• Since 2002 Seillan supervises viticulture and winemaking at Tenuta di  Arceno in Tuscany.
• In 2003, the Jackson family acquired the 17th century 36-hectare Saint Emilion estate Château Lassègue in partnership with the Seillan family. Today, father-and-son team Pierre and Nicolas Seillan direct viticulture and winemaking.
• Ancestor Jules Seillan drew the oenological map of Armagnac, and was one of the key figures to import rootstocks from the United States in the late 19th century to help save French vineyards from phylloxera.
• Father Jean Seillan was a cork maker in Lavardac in the Lot et Garonne.
• Pierre Seillan to complete his 55th vintage in 2022.
• Vérité has been on the Place de Bordeaux since the 2016 vintage.

Pierre Seillan’s first vintage at Vérité in Sonoma County wasn’t an easy one. The press derided 1998 as an ‘El Nino year’, with heavy rain and flooding at the start of the season, and twice the average amount of rainfall from late October to early June. Many estates ended up picking early to avoid rot.

“I like challenges and I never panic,” says Seillan today. He held his nerve and picked right through to October 26, achieving a level of ripeness that isn’t found in all Californian 1998 wines. And to maintain acidity levels with those late picking dates, he chose not to add acidity, but rather blend into fermentation vats the verjus – pressed juice of un-ripened grapes – to maintain balance. “That’s natural acidity,” he emphasises.

Rugby experience

“You need resolute determination to win,” he says, recalling his experience playing rugby for the Armagnac Bigorre team in France until his late 20s.

“I think of the third half, after the game, which brings together the two opposing teams to enjoy food and drink and exchange opinions as happens between friends,” he said. “It’s about conviviality, so after the grit of the game, it is educational to bring people together, as wine does now.”

Seillan, who turns 71 this coming June, first met Barbara Banke and husband Jess Jackson of Jackson Family Wines in 1995, at a supper organised during VinExpo, the biannual wine exhibition that was held in Bordeaux until just a few years ago. They offered Seillan the chance to join the company as winemaker, together creating Vérité (“truth” in French), from the inaugural 1998 vintage. “We became not only partners but true friends”, Seillan recalls. Over time, Vérité wines have achieved high acclaim, including seven 100-point scores from Robert Parker.

Today, Vérité boasts what Seillan calls 50 “micro crus” across four Sonoma appellations: Bennett Valley, Alexander Valley, Chalk Hill and Knights Valley. “We have a mosaic of terroirs, each with specific aromatic profiles and structural elements”, Seillan explains. Each micro cru is harvested and fermented separately, then aged in French oak barrels of assorted custom toasts. Seillan tailors winemaking and oak regimens to the personality of each lot, providing him with many components to create final blends for the three main Vérité wines: La Muse, with a majority of Merlot; La Joie, with mostly Cabernet Sauvignon; Le Désir, mostly Cabernet Franc.

A burly man even in his 70s, Seillan still looks ready to get on a pitch, even if perhaps now as coach rather than prop forward. Instead he channels that passion into winemaking, dividing time between California, France and Italy (Château Lassègue in Saint Emilion and at Tenuta di Arceno in Tuscany).

At all three estates, Seillan emphasises the importance of mastering tannins as an essential goal: “Tannins represent the wine’s conclusion, the end of the tasting experience, and it should be marked by a note of wanting to come back to the wine,” he says. “We don’t want an aggressive conclusion; we want drinkers to have more wine.”

Vineyard philosophy
Describing himself as “a servant of the soil”, he discovered a passion for Cabernet Franc at the family estate Château Bellevue in Gascony, and developed a deeper understanding of the grape in Saumur-Champigny, in the Loire Valley, having worked from 1977 to 1979 at the Château de Targe for the Pisani-Ferry family, with Madame Pisani-Ferry and her son Edouard. Today, Edouard’s son, Paul Pisani-Ferry, runs the property.

After his three years in Saumur Champigny, he then spent two decades in Bordeaux at several chateaux for Raoul and Jean Quancard, where he gained experience working across eight different appellations, quickly seeing nuances among vineyard sites that help him understand the importance of how elevation and vegetation interacts with rainfall and solar exposure. Such work set the stage for what his micro-cru philosophy that he exported to California. Over dinner he spoke of his maternal grandmother Malvina, who had taught him at a young age how to prune vines: “Not only that, she predicted 60 years ago that California would be a great place to make fine wines, long before the 1976 Judgment of Paris”, he affirmed.

Jess Jackson, who died in 2011, was attracted to Seillan’s winemaking. “When we met, we hit it off,” Seillan recalls. “I owe him so much for both supporting my vision and providing financial support.”

Over the years, the partnership with Jackson Family Wines reached other shores. For example, in 2003, Jackson Family Wines acquired the 17th century Château Lassègue in Saint Emilion, where Seillan directs. Neighbour Jean-Antoine Nony, of Grand Cru Classé Château Grand Mayne, praises Seillan as “a serious winemaker who makes excellent wines”.

Following the death of Jess Jackson, Barbara Banke and Monique and Pierre Seillan have seen the estate pass to the next generation, with son Nicolas Seillan taking on winemaking work at Lassègue, with his wife Christina. But there are no plans to slow down. Seillan himself continues to find the looser appellations rules of the New World as a séduction énorme, with greater freedom to experiment. While Seillan insists that he doesn’t try to “make Bordeaux in California”, he is clearly proud of Verité’s success in blind tastings against top Bordeaux. And he sees the location of  Vérité as only increasing in potential with the coming years. “With the tempering influence of the Pacific Ocean, the complex topography and surrounding vegetation, it is increasingly advantageous to work in cooler Sonoma.”

 

See Jane Anson’s recent tasting notes on Vérité 2018s here