With the death of Alexandre de Lur Saluces, a true champion of Sauternes disappears

Alexandre de Lur Saluces may have hated his inclusion (indeed the existence) of the book Noble Rot, which told the story of the hostile takeover of one of Bordeaux’s most revered and ancient estates, but it did a huge amount to stir interest again in a wine appellation that has been in danger over the past century of being eclipsed by shinier names.

We can hope that Lur Saluces’ death, at Château de Fargues in July 24, 2023, at the age of 89, regenerates that interest, giving a reason to dig into cellars to open a bottle of Sauternes, and rediscover a wine style that is, as he liked to say, ‘extravagant by nature’, and a ‘treasure of humanity’.

Few people did as much to shine a light on Sauternes as Lur Saluces, a passionate defender of this stubbornly masochistic style of winemaking, where the noble rot ensures grapes with tiny yields that have to be treated entirely by hand, and the vagaries of the weather mean entire vintages are regularly under threat.

From the time he took over from his uncle Bernard de Lur Saluces at Château dYquem in 1968, until his last moments at Château de Fargues in 2023, he did everything possible to uphold the importance of not only his own family estates but the appellation of Sauternes and Bordeaux itself, playing key roles in the Académie Internationale du Vin, the Académie du Vin de Bordeaux, and the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux. He was also awarded Officer de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole and the Ordre National du Mérite by the French government.

 

For 36 years he was the director – always the epitome of elegance, with a perfect suit and tie that could give Michael Broadbent a run for his money – of Yquem, the 1855 classification’s only Premier Cru Supérieur, or First Growth Superior, that had been in his family since 1785. His son Philippe de Lur Saluces remembers how the Hungarian-born London importer Akos Forczek once boasted to him ‘Alexandre, we had a Suduiraut ‘28 yeserday, it was amazing!’. ‘My father simply replied, conspicuously unimpressed: ‘1928? Oh… ‘ with a clear emphasis on nineteen. He was one of the very few men who could seriously pull off this joke’.

The loss of Yquem has been widely covered, but was a lasting wound. LVMH’s Bernard Arnault first bought shares in the château in 1996, gradually increasingly them and then transferring his entire holding to LVMH in 2009. Lur Saluces had launched several lawsuits in an attempt to keep majority control with his family, but when that became impossible, he still remained in his post as director until 2004, unwilling to leave the estate he loved so much. Along the way he became known as ‘the Sauternes sniper’, such was his insistence in sticking to the traditions of the region – he called dry white wine making in the region, for example, ‘a whim’, and a ‘desperate and despairing solution’.

His next stop after Yquem was to return to the original family seat – because 1785 was just recent history for the Lur Saluces family – of Château de Fargues, and turned his single-minded focus into restoring its past glories. In the family since 1472, a huge fire gutted the Medieval château building in 1687, after which the family focused on its other properties of Yquem, Filhot and Coutet, while de Fargues became the family farm. The first modern vintage of Fargues dates from 1943, bottled in 1947, and in recent years it has become one of my standout Sauternes, year in year out.

He was also passionate about silviculture, and owned private forests in Seignelay (Burgundy), as well as in the Landes, and the Gironde. One of France’s largest and most successful organic asparagus farms, Domaine d’Uza, and the Lous Seurrots campsite, helped keep the family income high enough to support the vagaries of sweet wine making at the highest level.

Lur Saluces’ son Philippe says, ‘My father was from a generation for whom duty was of paramount importance. When his uncle died in 1968, he realised he had a duty to save Yquem (the sales were extremely low and a lot of people were advising him to change these outdated and expensive harvest methods). Leaving Yquem when he turned 70 in 2004, he felt his duty was to save Fargues, now that his hands were free. It was his main conversation topic as well as his main anxiety. He could not understand that others did not share the same duty not specifically towards Fargues but towards Sauternes. I think this explains why he was so adamant about cocktails and so bitter about the négociants falling out of love with the region. I would try to give him economical reasons but that was foolish of me: duty precedes economic reason’.

The man who replaced him as director at Yquem, Pierre Lurton, said, ‘I remember with great emotion the many journeys that we undertook together when he was at the head of Yquem and me at Cheval Blanc, of our friendship and mutual understanding, and his natural elegance in exchanging with people we met, his dry sense of humour and his pleasure pleasure in sharing the glories of Château d’Yquem’.

As Lurton rightly says, Lur Saluces will be remembered for his generosity in sharing wines he loved – and not just those from his favourite appellation. Philippe de Lur Saluces remembers, ‘Many people talk to me about the amazing wines my father poured for them. When I was a kid, he would sometimes come back from the cellar with a couple of very old bottles. The guests would ask: ‘Alexandre, what are we drinking ?’ and he would reply ‘I don’t know. This was probably purchased by my grandmother but the labels have been washed away and I have had them recorked by Guy (Latrille) a few decades ago. It could be a Leoville, a Lafite or a Margaux, from the end of the 19th or very beginning of the 20th. It’s rather good anyways’. Of course he was having fun opening what I called the ‘incunabulas’ but his point was that you do not need to be an expert in wine to enjoy it and the best bottles should be used to convert people to wine, not confort those who are already into it’.

‘In the same spirit, as we were spending holidays in the Landes last summer, my father told my wife Charlotte and I: ‘I haven’t visited Michel (Guérard) for a while. Should we go there?’. We booked a table at Les Prés d’Eugénie and spent a lovely time sipping a bottle of Champagne with Michel before dinner. When he was handed the wine list, my father asked Charlotte ‘Have you often had Petrus?’. Charlotte shyly replied: ‘Non, Père, I don’t think I’ve ever had it’. My father handed me the wine list: ‘Which vintage should we pick for right bank?’. I said, as a joke: ‘I’ve heard good things about their 1982’. ‘Can you please order one?’ he replied. I showed him the list, pointing at the price ‘there are other very decent vintages, Dad’. ‘No, if Charlotte doesn’t know the wine, she should have a good first impression’. The impression was, indeed, good.

As for Fargues, his favourite vintage was 1988. He served regularly until François Amirault (technical director since 1993) and his son had to beg him to leave some for the future. Mr Amirault also convinced him that the young vintages should not be left to age and for the last 10 years, he enjoyed very young Fargues.

‘When we had to decide on the vintage we would serve after the funeral, we both said, without hesitation: 2017,’ says Philippe. ‘He loved the liveliness, the energy of this vintage’.

You can read more about his life, and that of his estate, in Château de Fargues, the incredible ambition of the Lur Saluces family in Sauternes (Éditions Glénat, 2022), and read a recent vertical on this site.