“You can’t play a game with power and then try to get rid of it,” Pichon Lalande’s winemaker Nicolas Glumineau says to me during the 2022 harvest, as we taste every vintage made since 2000. “It’s something you can’t do.”

Glumineau is a Renaissance man in a region paved by single-minded wine perfectionists. Take the Pichon Lalande dinner I attended a few years ago, which ended in him singing Italian opera—an accomplished baritone. Or consider that he studied wine under Denis Dubourdieu at Bordeaux University after a stint in the army while simultaneously studying opera singing and music. Add that to the fact that he has a master’s degree in enology genetics. And eventually, in 2005, at the age of 31, he started his wine career in the cellar of Château Haut Brion, followed by a brief period at Château Margaux, before moving on to his first solid winemaker gig at Montrose. In 2012, Glumineau was hired by the Champagne Roederer group to be the general manager and winemaker at Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande.

"You can’t play a game with power and then try to get rid of it."

“2013 was my first full vintage here,” Glumineau tells me. “Imagine! That year the yield was 1/5th of normal production, and the wine was 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Sometimes it’s the toughest vintages that...” he stops mid-sentence with a broad smile. “Well, what do you think of this 2013?”

After I offer a non-committal nod, he motions to a vintage made before he arrived, “I love the 2008.”

May-Eliane de Lencquesaing and her team had had a good run at the estate, having taken over in 1978 and knocking it out of the park with the legendary 1982 vintage. But the next generation did not share May-Eliane’s passion for the estate, and in 2006 she sold it to the Rouzaud family, descendants of Louis Roederer and owners of the Champagne Roederer group. While the property remained in flux until a vision for the estate could come together, some gorgeous wines were forged. The 2008, 2009, and 2010 trio are stand-outs. So, perhaps it was a mixed blessing that Glumineau came on board for the maligned 2013 vintage, in doing so, understanding the extent of his undertaking.

Roederer was instrumental in providing the resources for a completely new cellar at Pichon Lalande and a soil mapping exercise—the tools Glumineau needed to understand where the property was and where it needed to go. This resulted in restructuring the vineyards and converting them to organic and biodynamic methods.

2018, 2019, and 2020 are when the fruits of Glumineau's vision and efforts begin to appear. 

“I think 2019 and 2020 are a real step up,” Glumineau agrees. “For my personal taste, I prefer 2020 to 2019. If I were to choose a bottle.”

While we tasted in the facilities above the winery, grapes from the 2022 harvest were arriving in the cellar below us. “I think 2022 will be something between 2015 and 2020,” Glumineau says. “Because in 2020 there was something about the Cabs...the quality of pips and tannins is similar to 2022. Oh, and we will have our first harvest of white wine this year! I’m not a huge fan of Bordeaux whites, except for a few labels. Can you guess the grapes?”

I cannot.

“It will be Chardonnay and Savagnin. I think Chardonnay is the most flexible grape. Savagnin because I first thought of planting Chenin, but we don’t have the chalk to make an elegant Chenin. So, then I thought of the dry, blended wines of Jura, and I love them. It’s a very small crop this year—150 liters only. The alcoholic ferments have almost finished today. We will wait a few years to finish the wine. But this is just an experiment,” he hastens to add. “The vines are planted on the west side of Pauillac, so it will be labeled ‘vin de table.’ We planted another plot with Chardonnay, Sémillon, and Gros Manseng.”

The name?

“Pichon Comtesse Blanc.”

I’m packing up my laptop, about to depart, when it occurs to me. “Do you have music playing when you’re making wine? When you put together the blends?”

“Of course,” says Glumineau, as if this is the most obvious thing. “There is always music in my head and sometimes in the background when I am putting together wines. I put together my own Spotify playlists. Mainly, it’s Radiohead and Kate Bush. Radiohead can be strong, but it’s in the air. It’s in the wine. I am a huge fan of jazz, classical, and The Cure, but this is not Pichon Comtesse. Kate Bush (early Kate Bush) and Radiohead are Pichon Comtesse. And maybe Bowie. But the tannins, in particular, are Radiohead.”

As I’m already out the door, he adds, “You know; I would love to put together a project of Pichon Comtesse accompanying music.”

I hope he does.