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Sun sets on Chateau Broustet

Blog Posts Bordeaux Sauternes wine

Guillaume Forcade is a dynamic young man who has spent the past year trying to save his family’s chateau from going under. He was too late.

The Barsac estate was sold on September 30th to an Italian buyer, Taillan, which owns wine merchant Ginestet and a number of Bordeaux chateaux including Gruaud Larose and Chasse Spleen.

It is sad for the company since Forcade had been working his butt off to raise the company’s profile and injecting a breath of fresh air into the appellation. He had packaged some of the estate’s wines in test tubes and the brand had become involved in Vogue and Mercedes parties.

Forcade said: “It is difficult to accept the end when the latest developments we made to improve the quality, the brand and the export market were finally giving extremely good results.” It was too little too late.

The sale reflects a malaise in Sauternes/Barsac. The domestic market is the most important for Sauternes, representing more than 70% of all sales. The French have cut their Sauternes consumption from 83,536hl in 1999/2000, to 54,477hl in 2008/09. The appellation’s vineyard area has fallen from 4139ha to 3773ha in the same period.

Forcade added: ‘It is incredibly sad but selling Sauternes has been very difficult for all of us in the appellation. For a grand cru classé owner like my family, who bought the estate with the help of banks, the huge debts have been just too difficult to face with the economic downturn the whole region of Sauternes has endured for the past ten years.”

The average consumer is over 60 years old (CIVB research) and it needs to find new drinkers. It also needs to encourage all consumers to see sweet wine as a year-round drink – not just for Christmas. Sweet Bordeaux is trying to do this. But with little marketing money, limited awareness of their consumer base and a plethora of marketing/organisational bodies within the small appellation, it’s not going to be an easy task.

The Forcade family are still the owners of Château Saint-Marc, the immediate neighbour of Château Broustet, an estate in the family since the 18th century.

Despite the setback, Forcade is not giving up. He promises blog pages, video teasers and launching Saint-Marc wine in tubes in the US at the end of November. The sun may have set on Broustet but I suspect Saint-Marc is entering a new dawn if Forcade has anything to do with it.

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