2014 Chateau Valandraud Saint Emilion Grand Cru Classe 750 ml

At the Top of Saint-Émilion’s 2014 Class

Chateau Valandraud took the critics by storm with the sensational 2014 release, which asserted its place among the year’s greatest offerings from the Right Bank. Wine Enthusiast laid on 96 points and a Cellar Selection commendation, calling it “at the top of the tree in Saint-Emilion’s classification” and “an impressive wine that is so ripe and with great structure.” The wine elicited a “wow” from James Suckling, who echoed the 96 point score, falling for the “spellbinding” aromas of blackberry, licorice, and blueberry. The list goes on, as Jeb Dunnuck declared it “one of the few ‘do not miss’ wines in 2014.” With each passing vintage, owner Jean-Luc Thunevin—famously nicknamed the “Bad Boy” of Bordeaux by Robert Parker—increasingly trusts the vineyard to do the work, making for wines of fantastic poise, purity, and elegance. 

A pioneer of the garagiste movement, Jean-Luc Thunevin’s entrée into the world of top Bordeaux is a true David and Goliath story. Beginning in the early 1990s, he and his wife Murielle Andraud worked out of a borrowed garage to create the first batches of Valandraud, lacking the money and resources of neighboring, generations-old châteaux. They did everything by hand. When they ran out of space, the vats multiplied to fill the dining room and kitchen as well.

Yields on the 1.5-acre plot near Château Pavie-Macquin were miniscule, the farming organic. Thunevin succeeded by sweating every detail while experimenting with green harvesting, de-suckering, and new oak.

Thunevin’s hard work and indomitable determination paid off: by 1995, Robert Parker was favorably comparing the Château Valandraud to Right Bank royalty like Château Pétrus, and crowned Thunevin an iconoclastic “Bad Boy.” An Algerian immigrant and former DJ, the upstart winemaker had proved that nervy passion and modernistic viticulture could match and sometimes even exceed old-school Bordelais heritage. Saint-Émilion would never be the same.

Having won all the plaudits that his younger firebrand self so fiercely desired (including Premier Grand Cru Classé status for Chateau Valandraud), Thunevin has matured with age, as have his wines—to incredible effect. Last year, Neal Martin of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate took part in the only complete vertical tasting of Valandraud, ranging from 1991 to 2015, with each bottle poured blind against another elite Bordeaux of the same vintage. Wowed by the age-worthiness of even the earliest vintages, Martin concluded that the “retrospective merely galvanized my belief that it can stand shoulder to shoulder with Saint Emilion's finest. When firing on all cylinders Valandraud delivers the complexity, precision, sophistication and personality of the appellation's best.”

Valandraud delivered those goods in 2014, deemed “the finest Bordeaux vintage since 2010” by Vinous’s Antonio Galloni. Can it presume to go shoulder-to-shoulder with the First Growths of the world, as Martin has argued? Hit buy and judge for yourself.