Etablissements Thunevin

Château Valandraud is the final achievement of an enormous sum of extremely hard, meticulous work on the part of a couple with a passion for wine, Jean-Luc Thunevin and his wife Murielle Andraud. Having become highly successful wine merchants in the Saint-Emilion area, their burning ambition was to own their own vineyard and make their own wine.

Little by little, they bought up several parcels of vines. The name of the growth is both geographical (Val for Vale of Fongaban) and sentimental (Andraud being Murielle’s name). That was how Château Valandraud came on being.

Their policy is therefore to look after the vines, some thirty years old, with the same meticulous care always keeping to the authentic nature of things. Thanks to their intense devotion to hard work, Jean-Luc And Murielle Thunevin manage to accomplish an incredible amount of manual labour, from the winter taks right up to the harvest, everything is done according to tradition yet at the same time employing modern methods.

The harvest is picked in only two days but it is done “in the family” using some thirty people who are friends as well as employees, even customers with a passion for wine lend a hand. A first selection is done in the vineyard to make sure only fully ripe grapes are picked.

Once they arrive at M Thunevin’s minute winemaking facilities, the bunches are again selected on a sorting table before being stemmed manually. The next stage consists of bursting the grapes in a hand-crusher. The must obtained, which is very rich and pure, is then run off by “muscular” gravity into the oak fermentation vasts.

Once the alcoholic fermentation is over, the “nouvelle cuvée” of Valandraud is drained into new oak barrels for the malolactic fermentation. Although this rare way of working is expensive and also rather a dangerous exercice, M Thunevin does not hesitate to take the risk in order to perfect his wine.

Click here to visit Jean-Luc Thunevin’s Blog.

About the Winemakers

Jean-Luc and Murielle Thunevin

Jean-Luc Thunevin became a “star” of the wine world within less than a decade thanks to his very famous ‘garage wine’ Chateau Valandraud.

It might be a winetasting of Le Pin, a Pomerol made from a tiny vineyard that gave rise to his desire to make an exceptional wine too. Thanks to his passion for wine, his determination and his desperate eagerness, he could make his wish become real from the first vintage, in 1991, of his Chateau Valandraud.

This vintage notes the beginning of a wonderful adventure and a flashing success.

He inspired many winemakers and initiated numerous other ‘garage wines’. All these micro-cuvées realized from low yields produce concentrated wines.
Murielle, his wife, plays an important role in the success of this imposing wine. Indeed she brings the most detailed care to the vines: specific pruning adapted to each vine, deleafing to aerate the grape, green harvest to cut away the excess bunches and limit them to six for each vine-plant.

On his side, Jean-Luc Thunevin decides the harvest date once the grapes have reached the optimal maturity. For the winemaking, he adopted the Burgundy’s techniques of punching of the cap in the fermenting vat (pigeage) and stirring of the lies in the oak barrel in order to get the maximum extraction for his wines. He does no fining, no filtration, but racking barrel to barrel every three months.

Always trying to reach excellence, his work methods are extreme to produce stupendous wines: dark, ripe and opulent.

During those years of strenuous work, Jean-Luc Thunevin has been developing a know-how and proficiency that he shares with many other properties like Chateau Fleur Cardinale (Saint-Emilion Grand Cru), Château Haut-Mazeris (Fronsac et Canon Fronsac), Chateau Andréas (Saint-Emilion Grand Cru), Chateau Balestard (Appellation Bordeaux), Marojallia (Appellation Margaux) to quote only few of them. Furthermore, Jean-Luc Thunevin bought Château Bellevue de Tayac, Margaux.

Click here to visit Jean-Luc Thunevin’s Blog.

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