She will remain as one of the personalities of the wine world of the year 2023. Noémie Tanneau, a 36-year-old winemaker who operates Château Saint-Ferdinand in Lussac Saint-Emilion (Gironde), found herself overnight under the in the spotlight, after King Charles III tasted his wine during his visit to Bordeaux on September 22.
20 minutes went to meet the winemaker this Friday, almost four months after the event that changed his life. “I will always remember the very first article from “20 Minutes”, published on the day of the tasting, on Friday,” she tells us with a big smile. It was from there that I received an influx of orders for the Source vintage, the one tasted by the king, it was incredible. It’s a completely crazy story, because I’ve been struggling for four years…”
“People absolutely wanted this wine, it was crazy”
The following two weeks, Noémie Tanneau made appearances in the news of TF1, France 2, France 3, M6, and compiled articles in Le Figaro, Here is, Gala and even The Times. “And we were overwhelmed with orders. My phone rang every minute, it started at 6 a.m. and lasted until midnight! I finally had to leave a message on my answering machine to tell people to go directly to my website and send me an email to place an order, because I don’t have an e-store. We received hundreds of emails from all over France. People absolutely wanted this wine, some even wanted to order four cases, ten cases, without even tasting it. It was crazy. »
The first days, the winemaker asked her customers “to order six bottles minimum, because I didn’t want to bother sending just one bottle.” But she quickly had to backpedal. “We finally limited orders by setting a maximum, first of three bottles, then two, then one… I only had 3,000 bottles of this vintage, it’s very small, and everything was gone in two weeks. Normally, it would have taken me at least six months to sell off this stock. »
“We worked like crazy”
Noémie Tanneau, who manages a small six-hectare property, found herself organizing expeditions at an industrial pace, even though she was at the same time developing her 2023 vintage, the harvest of which had just entered her vats. “We worked like crazy,” she remembers. Everyone got involved, our young girls at the labeling, my parents who stacked the boxes…”
Despite those who advised her to increase her price, Noémie Tanneau chose to maintain the price of this Source vintage at 15 euros. “On the other hand, I asked those who wanted six bottles to also buy other vintages so that they could discover them. Good for me, because customers have sometimes preferred them to the Source vintage. »
“I was questioning myself”
The winemaker assures that she “didn’t see anything coming. » “It’s the CIVB [Conseil interprofessionnel du vin de Bordeaux] who selected my wine to be tasted by the king. I never thought it would have such repercussions. We’re not ready to deal with this kind of thing, but I’m not going to complain, I was so waiting for something to come and save me! The week before, I was borderline burned out… It had been four years since I started, I still wasn’t getting paid, and I had reached a point where I was really wondering what I was doing. were going to do. Today I tell myself that I must have a lucky star, or something like that. »
A committed winemaker, Noémie Tanneau launched into the profession late in life, in 2020. From 2021, she began converting to organic. Concerning the wine tasted by the king, a 2022 vintage, it was produced without added sulfur or sulphites. “I am convinced by this approach even if it is not easy,” explains the young woman. In 2023, for example, I took a beating: with vine diseases, I was only able to produce ten hectoliters per hectare, instead of 55 in normal times. This is bad timing, because this is the moment when it finally takes off for me, and I would have needed to have volume, but I don’t see myself growing it any other way. »
“Off again for a ride”
Today, “I went back for a walk,” she assures. “All this comforted me in the very short term on an economic level – thanks to these sales, I completed the year 2023 in a normal way – and in the longer term on a psychological level. When you are an entrepreneur, you would like everything to go quickly, but when I look back, I tell myself that what is happening to me is also thanks to the bricks laid throughout these four years. The CIVB did not choose me by chance, it was thanks to all this work. »
If the frenzy of fall 2023 has subsided, “other things are falling into place, particularly with professionals. » Noémie Tanneau was able to hire her secretary who was in apprenticeship, will create an e-boutique and wishes to launch into an experiment with white grape varieties, “by allowing my clients to invest in vines. »
The winemaker also joined a collective of winegrowers from Gironde, Bordeaux Rocks, whose objective is to boost the image of Bordeaux wines “and win back professionals, wine merchants, restaurateurs…” “We have this image of an elitist Bordeaux , expensive, while large castles only represent 3%. The vast majority are little ones like me. And after the “king’s rush”, I received a lot of messages from winegrowers who told me that this story was really good, at a time when our sector is going through a serious crisis. » A sort of enchanted parenthesis, on which the winemaker intends to continue surfing.
The Bordeaux Rocks winegrowers’ collective will organize a tasting in Paris, on the sidelines of the Wine Paris trade show, on February 11 on the barge at 86, quai d’Austerlitz (13th).