Exspectatia 2021 - Christian Ducroux

I first tasted Christian’s wines at Salons des Vins Libres in Mittelbergheim in 2021, on a hot day in early July. He was presenting with his son Thibault. With their stand unassailed by the hordes of excited interlopers jumping at the chance to mingle during a brief break in the lockdowns, I took the chance to taste through their selection and was astounded by the depth and emotion of their work, characterised by a density of fruit and thrilling, rose-granite minerality. I asked to visit their estate in Thulon, and we agreed a date two weeks thereafter.

In the interim, every winemaker I mentioned the upcoming trip to gushed over Christian’s wines and his works in the vines, though his estate was completely unfamiliar to me. On spending time with the father and son duo in their vines and cellar, I soon understood why. Christian's undistracted focus on his vineyard work, and aversion to the celebrity such a reputation often attracts, allowed him to practice his metier in relative peace since starting out in 1970, in the same vineyards his father and grandfather before him had tended.

I followed a capillary system of narrow, winding roads that connect the tiny villages dotted around Mt. Brouilly and Régnié-Durette to Lantignié. Vines dominate the landscape up here in the hills, but this is cycling country too, and it was Christian’s familiarity with Cork through the Tour de France that convinced him to sell me some wines after we tasted that day. Arriving at his cellar by bike, following directions of farmers along the way, I found Christian and Thibault working in a parcel of 90-year-old Gamay vines below their house, making early preparations for the harvest. Their two horses took shade from the July sun beneath a peach tree, one of many dotted amongst his vines.

In his first decade running the family estate, Christian worked in the way his father taught him, regular, heavy treatments in the vines, and vinifying with yeasts, filtration, and sulfitage. In quite a bold move, Christian was convinced to convert his vines to organic in 1980, after reading the lectures of Rudolf Steiner. By 1985, the estate was certified biodynamic, and Christian established himself as a quiet pioneer of progressive viticulture in France.

Christian was inspired by the results he observed and continued to explore methods that could enrich the biodiversity of his vineyards and the health of the soils. He folded in agroforestry, planting fruit trees throughout his vineyards, reduced the density of vines, and reduced his overall hectarage from 8 to 4. In 1998, he retired his tractor, taking two horses to work between the vines and not compact the soil as they do. His aim is to interrupt the rhythms of nature as little as possible.

Christian refers to himself as a farmer, not a winemaker or vigneron, and so his vinifications are relatively straightforward. All his parcels are harvested on the same day, with whole bunches loaded into vats intact. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries in the Gang of Four, Christian never used external CO2 for his whole bunch fermentations, which usually last about 15 days. Instead he allows the fermentations to begin as semi-carbonic, before the tanks fill with CO2 from the fermenting juice at the bottom. Each of his three reds come from different portions of the press, Prologue is the free run juice, Exspectatia is the first pressed juice, and Patience is the remainder. The pressed juices are fed by gravity to Christian's subterranean cellar to age over winter in old barriques.

Now retired, Christian’s son Thibault looks after the cellar work and most of the work in the vineyard, but of course Christian is ever present, particularly in the vines. When I first visited, Thibault had just graduated from oenology, and though young, showed ambition to take over the estate and carry on his father’s work.

Christian’s vines grow within the less heralded, most recent Cru of the Beaujolais, Regnié, where the elevation and pink granite ‘gore' drives the vine roots deep into the soil. The soils also radiate heat absorbed during the day to help with even ripening. While his wines are clear voiced expressions of the terroir here, Christian has chosen to sell his wines as vin de France since 2013, renaming what had been his Regnié as Exspectatia.

Grapes: Gamay

Region: Lantignié, Beaujolais, France