It wasn’t that long ago that Guillaume Pouthier, the managing director of fashionable Pessac-Leognan estate Chateau Les Carmes Haut-Brion, was more than raising a few eyebrows in tradition-bound Bordeaux when he began using a small percentage of whole bunches in his fermentations. He was hoping to make a fresher Bordeaux that was easier to drink young and showed a distinctive character compared with the offerings made by his neighbors and peers.
Today, he ferments with about 40 percent or more whole bunches and he is considering using more. And Les Carmes is one of the darlings of contemporary Bordeaux, making some of the most attractive high-end reds in the region, each of which exhibits a unique personality and vivid expression.
Whole bunches are commonplace in winemaking, especially with such grape varieties as pinot noir, but some winemakers in Bordeaux are turning to the method to give their cabernet sauvignons and cabernet francs a fresher and more vibrant character, especially in hot and dry grape-growing seasons such as the region’s most recent year in bottle, 2022. Some say whole-cluster fermentations and maceration even reduce the alcohol in a wine, which could have been a godsend in such a hot and dry year.