GRAND CRU CLASSE EN 1855
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Although the pancarte was offensive, it was not this that caused the negociant’s apoplectic reaction. Neither was it that, after three centuries of cobwebbed obscurity, the cellars were to be open – 365 days a year – to the scrutiny of every Tom, Dick and Harry. The public proclamation that, according to the renowned classification of 1855, Château de Cluzac had been declared a deuxième cru did not bother him either.
The French were by disposition categorisers. Prince Napoleon, organiser of the Paris Exhibition, anxious to display the splendour of the Third Empire, had invited the courtiers (brokers) attached to the Bordeaux Bourse to prepare a hierarchical list of the region’s most prestigious wines. The Chamber had sent back an inventory based on historic prices paid, with the wines in the different classes arranged in alphabetical order.
Dissatisfied with this, the Prince insisted on an entirely ‘new’ division. By tasting the Médoc wines, more or less conscientiously, and placing them in order of merit within the classes, the brokers arrived at the immutable 1855 classification which (pace Château Mouton-Rothschild, which had been declared a first growth in 1973), had tormented the Bordeaux growers ever since.
What Claude Balard objected to, and what had brought a pain like a tight band, as if he were about to be suffocated, to his chest, was the statement that, although he, Claude Balard, was in possession of an exclusive ten-year contract, signed by Charles-Louis himself, to distribute Château de Cluzac wines, they were being blatantly offered by the Baron’s daughter for sale at the cellar door.
The wine trade, like any other business, was subject to its fair share of skulduggery. The Baron was fully aware that, as with generations of chartrons before him, the price which Claude Balard charged the wholesalers for the wine was twice as much as that which he had paid for it. While, for obvious reasons, this arrangement suited the negociant, it also prevented the Baron from making any official revenue in France and left him with a handsome profit margin to be salted away in the Swiss bank account.
Disregarding his appointment at the Maison du Vin – first things first – and thinking that this time Marie-Paule really would kill him, Balard, who had overshot the billboard, which quite outdid in vulgarity any other pancarte along the Route des Châteaux, made a clumsy three-point turn. Facing in the opposite direction to that in which he had been going, he drove down the bumpy road towards Château de Cluzac, where, despite the fact that it was still only ten o’clock in the morning, Clare had been in her office for several hours.
Facile dictu, difficile factu: easier said than done. The truth of the Latin tag, drummed into her by Sister Agnes at St Mary’s, had been brought home to her during the four weeks in which she had been in charge of Château de Cluzac.
‘Good-quality grapes crushed and fermented. Control the temperature and keep it clean. It’s dead simple.’ Remembering the words of Big Mick destined to needle Halliday Baines at the Fête de la Fleur, Clare reckoned that the wine, asleep in the cellars beneath the experienced eye of the maître de chai, was the least of her problems.
A farewell supper at Hannah’s, for which Francesca had made a vat of her ‘killer curry’, had marked her rite of passage from the Nicola Wade Gallery to Château de Cluzac, from Notting Hill to Bordeaux. The warm send-off given to her at the party, to which Jamie’s ex-girlfriend, Miranda Pugh, had taken her handsome racing driver, Barnaby Muirhead, had brought home the isolation that lay ahead.
They had all been pretty smashed when Sebastian, who fancied himself as a raconteur and who had been propping up the wall and discussing the use of ultrasound in osteomyelitis with Jamie most of the evening, had told a French joke to make Clare feel more at home.
‘There’s this honeymoon couple…’
‘I hope it’s clean!’
‘…who find that their hotel in the Dordogne is full. The young man parks the 2CV in a country lane where they spend the night under the car…’
‘Disgusting!’
‘In the morning they’re woken up by this gendarme. “’Allo, ’Allo…!”’
‘What was Inspector Clouseau doing in the Dordogne, Sebby?’
‘Do shut up Seth,’ Hannah said.
‘“’Allo, ’Allo…”’
‘’Allo, ’Allo!’ Imitating Sebastian’s phoney French accent, they all fell about laughing.
‘Quiet please! “’Allo, ’Allo! What eez going on ’ere?” the gendarme says. “I’m s-s-sorry officer,” the young bridegroom stammers. “But I was just repairing my motor car.” The gendarme shakes his head sadly. “Non, M’sieur. I do not sink you were repairing your motor car.” “Why not?” says the young man. “Zere are three reasons why not…”’
They were all quiet now.
‘“One”’ – Sebastian raised a finger. ‘“Your toes are pointing in ze wrong direction…”’
‘Ooooh!’
‘“Two: zere is a crowd around you shouting ‘Bravo! Bravo…!’”’
‘Aaaagh!’
‘And three?’ Barnaby Muirhead asked.
‘“Three…”’ Sebastian made them wait. He twirled an imaginary moustache. ‘“Three: someone ’as stolen ze car!”’
The party had ended in tears, as they said goodbye to Clare thrusting farewell presents into her hand: eau-de-toilette from Nicola (who still had not forgiven her), a gilt pill-box from Zoffany, a copy of a fifteenth-century necklace from the V and A museum shop from Hannah, decorated writing-paper from Tony and Clive, and a photograph frame from Francesca.
Saying goodbye to Jamie at the airport, Clare had almost changed her mind.
‘What if I make a fool of myself? What if I can’t do it?’
‘If you can sell paintings sweetheart, you can sell wine.’
‘I wish you were coming with me.’
‘I’ll be with you all the way.’
‘Will you keep an eye on Grandmaman?’
‘Grandmaman and I are going to have dinner every Tuesday.’
Clare took a handful of Nicola’s pink tissues from her pocket. Her voice was unsteady.
‘Mind you don’t cut the nose off the Brie.’
Taking the tissues from her, Jamie lifted her chin and wiped her damp face.
‘You’ll be all right, darling. All beginnings are hard.’
‘Tolstoy?’
‘Jamie Spence-Jones. You’re going to miss your plane.’
‘I don’t think I quite realised how much I love you…’
‘“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”’
‘Jamie Spence-Jones?’
‘Anonymous. Let me see you smile.’
‘I don’t feel like smiling.’
Clare wound her arms round Jamie’s neck.
‘I’ll call you every night.’
The first thing she had done on taking over Château de Cluzac was to set up an office for herself. Appropriating one of the large disused rooms in the chais, she had thrown out the ancient armoire stacked with yellowing papers, the worm-eaten table and the rickety chairs. Doing a ‘Laura Spray’ on the administrative building, she had transformed it into an efficient bureau, with glass doors and windows, through which she could both be seen and see into the sunlit courtyard. Hanging up a sign of welcome ‘Accueil: Bureau de Vente’, she installed herself on a black leather chair, which contrasted with the gleaming white tiles of the floor, behind a vast chrome and ebony desk.
The fact that the renovations were done on credit, underwritten by her name, and that no funds were available to pay the bills, incurred the opprobrium of Monsieur Boniface. When she visited the estate manager in his dusty and adjoining office, with its faded plan of the château and its vineyards attached with drawing-pins to the wall, he informed her that the cash crunch, which had led the Baron to put Château de Cluzac on the market, meant that there were no funds available either to meet the monthly salary cheques or to ward off Van
Gelder and keep the show on the road. He did not trouble to hide his resentment at Clare’s presence at the château, a resentment that was shared not only by many others on the estate, but paradoxically by Sidonie.
Clare’s first priority was to set up a meeting with Monsieur Guilleret at the Crédit Lyonnais in the Cours de l’Intendance. The bank manager, who had accommodated the Baron to the limit, received his daughter with suspicion. He was not moved either by Clare’s declared intention to promote the Château de Cluzac label, known to few people outside France, to international prominence, or her plans to make the château into a viable proposition which would take it into the twenty-first century. Doubting her ability to transform the estate (his views on women were decidedly vieux jeux), and painfully aware that there were already too many dodgy loans around, he turned down, in the nicest possible way, her request for a loan.
On her way out of the bank Clare almost collided with Alain Lamotte, whose rendezvous with Monsieur Guilleret followed her own.
‘Lamotte.’ He held out his hand. ‘Assurance Mondiale. We met at the Fête de la Fleur.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Clare sympathised with the young man, in his penguin tie, who had set his heart on Château de Cluzac.
‘No hard feelings.’ Alain Lamotte glanced at his gold Rolex as he swung his briefcase towards the stairs. ‘Look, if you need any help…’
He was the first person to proffer assistance rather than obstacles.
Swallowing her de Cluzac pride, Clare clutched at the offer.
‘As a matter of fact…’
‘Bon. I’ll call you.’
By the time Claude Balard drove like a demon into the courtyard at Cluzac and burst in upon her in her new office, Alain Lamotte, true to his word, had not only called on Clare but taken her to lunch at the Lion d’Or. She was badly in need of friends. Judging from the look on his face, Claude Balard was not going to be one of them.
The transformation, not only of the chais but of Clare’s appearance, took a modicum of wind out of the negociant’s sails. What was it his wife had said? The Cluzac girl looked more like a vineyard worker than the daughter of the Baron. Despite the fact that she was tucking into a piece of bread with Sidonie’s coarse pâté (made from chicken liver, sausage meat, unsalted pork fat and cognac), this was no vineyard worker that faced him coolly across the wide expanse of ordered desk.
Having transmogrified her life to that of château owner, Clare had decided to act the part. Aided and abetted by Beatrice Biancarelli, she now had a wardrobe of sharp business suits – all of them trousered and most of them black – with which to impress her prospective clients. Even her plimsolls had been temporarily consigned to limbo, and shaped heels on elegant shoes completed the seamless switch to her French persona.
‘Cette pancarte…!’ Monsieur Balard, red in the face, greeted her before they had even shaken hands.
‘Won’t you sit down?’ Clare, who had been half expecting the negociant’s visit, indicated a chair.
‘C’est illégal!’
‘Illegal? I don’t think so. Have you not seen the other signs? Château Margaux, Château Lynch-Bages, Château Prieure-Lichine.’ She deliberately misunderstood.
Claude Balard looked at Rougemont, who was lying at Clare’s feet, and returned the dog’s baleful glare.
‘Where is your father?’
‘He left for Florida a week ago. Didn’t he say good bye?’
‘I am the Baron’s negociant.’
Clare nodded. ‘So I understand, Monsieur.’
‘There is a contract. It designates Balard et Fils as the sole distributor of Château de Cluzac wine.’
‘My father informed me to that effect.’
‘Then how can you put that monstrous sign…? I have never in my life seen anything so hideous…’
‘You have to admit, it’s eye-catching. It certainly caught yours!’
‘So tasteless… But that is quite beside the point. Your father’s wine…’
‘My wine, Monsieur Balard.’
‘As you wish, Mademoiselle. Château de Cluzac wine. You have no right to sell it.’
‘Business is business. You pay me only fifty francs a bottle. I can get a hundred or a hundred and twenty at the cellar door.’
‘But you are not empowered to do so.’ The girl, Balard thought, was stupid. ‘There is a binding contract.’
‘I must ask you to release me from it.’
‘Not a chance. There is still two years to run. The contract was signed by your father. Until you remove that sign you are in breach of it. I shall take you to court.’
‘Not a good idea.’ Clare was unruffled.
‘Try to stop me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Clare stood up as the negociant made for the door. ‘The Syndicat des Negociants, however, might take a somewhat different view…’
Balard stopped in his tracks.
‘What has the Syndicat to do with it?’
‘From now on Château de Cluzac will dispense with the services of Balard et Fils. Any attempt to enforce your contract will be reported to the Syndicat, together with the information that for several years now you have been issuing my father with false invoices…’
‘Your father told you that?’ Balard was flabbergasted.
‘On the contrary, Monsieur Balard, by the elementary strategy of putting two and two together, I managed to find out what has been going on, for myself.’
Twenty-four
Clare’s statement to Claude Balard, that she had discovered his perfidy for herself was not strictly true. Whereas when she had examined the Mémo de Chasse she had had her suspicions about her father’s red-faced negociant, it was Alain Lamotte – who had carried out his own extensive checks on behalf of Assurance Mondiale – who confirmed that for some time the negociant had been lining his own pockets.
Lunch at the Lion d’Or at Arsac, with Alain Lamotte in his white shirt (testimony to Delphine’s fastidious housekeeping), Dunhill jacket, and tie decorated this time with multicoloured babushkas, had to Clare’s surprise lasted well into the afternoon. It was only when she looked round the little restaurant, one wall of which was lined with bottles of the local château owners’ finest vintages displayed in wooden showcases, that she realised theirs was the only table still occupied and that little Monsieur Barbier, who three hours earlier had welcomed Alain and his guest so enthusiastically, was now politely waiting for them to leave.
Lamotte appeared to bear her no ill will for snatching Château de Cluzac from under the nose of Assurance Mondiale. He had gone out of his way to be helpful. Despite the brash glass-and-chrome image of the shop-front Clare had created, she had been nervously feeling her way. By the time she left the Lion d’Or, she had not only revised her opinion of Alain – whom she had unjustly pigeonholed as less of a brain and more of a pretty face – but had a better idea of what she was doing and funds with which to do it.
Alain Lamotte, company man and investor rather than wine buff, nevertheless had the château business taped. Before the first course was finished, Clare knew more about running a vineyard than she would have found out for herself in a month of Sundays.
Talking non-stop, his normally reserved tongue loosened by passion for his work, and with frequent recourse to the cigarettes by his side, Alain, who turned out to be a walking database, blinded her with figures. He informed her not only that Bordeaux produced some 660 million bottles of wine (one quarter white) annually, generating sales of 11.4 billion francs, but that over the past decade his own company, Assurance Mondiale, had spent over one billion francs to become the biggest single investor in Bordeaux wines.
‘In the old days we invested in the stock market or in real estate. Then we bought forests. Now we believe that the most useful way to diversify our portfolio is to switch at least one per cent of our clients’ assets to vineyards.’
‘You must have been pretty mad at losing Cluzac.’
Alain said nothing. She could se
e from his face that he was angry.
‘You are mad at losing Cluzac.’
‘You win some, you lose some. I must admit I did a hell of a lot of work on it.’
‘If it hadn’t been me it would have been Van Gelder.’
Lamotte shrugged. ‘I’m not bothered about foreign competition. They can’t pack up the land and take it home with them. Tell me about your plans.’
‘I’m going to throw the whole shooting match open to the public…’
‘Picnic areas and a safari park?’
‘That might come later. Right now I’m trying to fix up my visites to the cellars – if I can get Jean Boyer to co-operate. At the moment he’s being exceedingly bolshie. The groups will assemble in the courtyard, then start with a tour of the château and work their way to the chais, which I’m in the process of cleaning up. Afterwards they will come upstairs to the “shop”, where they will be able to buy objects de vin, cahiers de cave and books on Bordeaux, as well as honey, potpourri and other knick-knacks. Hannah – a friend of mine – is organising some “Château de Cluzac” T-shirts. The tour will finish in a room off the Bureau d’Acceuil, where there’ll be tastings of drinkable, affordable wine.
‘The visite will start in the daylight and gradually, and dramatically, get darker, ending with the descent into the cave – which will be lit like a grotto – into almost total darkness. Later on they can spend time in the vineyards and stroll round the gardens. Like everything else at Cluzac, the gardens have been sadly neglected. With the help of Monsieur Boniface, who is also being unbelievably uncooperative, I am planning to lay out new flowerbeds and put in some fountains…’
‘Sorry to interrupt.’ Alain Lamotte stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. ‘But it’s a rule of thumb in my company that the modernisation of winery equipment, and the restoration of buildings, is carried out before anything is done to the grounds. I’m wondering just how wise it is, Mademoiselle de Cluzac…’
‘Clare.’
‘…Clare, to run before you can walk?’
‘Not wise at all. But since the whole thing will probably be blown sky high by the fisc any day, probably none of it will ever happen.’
Vintage Page 19