Introducing the - Peugeot

Guiraud
he Sauternes
By Pierre-Alexandre Bescos
Photos : Château Guiraud, DR
This is how it is in Guiraud, nothing comes
easily. These are the secrets that must be
penetrated to understand the wine made
here.
A stroll around familiar territory
It doesn’t take much for Xavier Planty to act
as a guide to his land. This seaman’s son, who
preferred the call of the land to the call of
the sea, knows every inch of it. He gives you
the time of a teacher and the precision of a
scholar. To know is to master. Eloquently he
juggles characteristics, talks about sulphur, a
well thought out struggle and next minute
serves you up an historical anecdote. He is
like his wine, surprising and many-faceted,
calling on biology one moment and history
the next. Who would have believed that
Guiraud’s black label – the only one for a
Sauternes – was prompted by Napoleon’s
funeral? The story of the wine is punctuated
by historical events and a curious grouping
of borders: people say that a Roman road
passed the château or talk about the more
recent establishment of the demarcation
line between Occupied and Vichy France.
Guiraud has always been somewhere you
pass through as you travel north from Bazas
on the way to Bordeaux.
Nature in control
The true master of the Sauternes winegrowing
region is Botrytis Cinerea, that
magnificent fungus which gives wine high
sugar potential (up to 350 g/l) and which is
the wine’s distinguishing characteristic. This
wine is the product of the whims of the
weather and tricky and restrictive growing
conditions. At Guiraud, the vineyard is shared
by two varieties: the majority is Sémillon
while a third of the planting is Sauvignon
and it is a point of honour to use natural
methods to make the wine. Out with
chemicals, everything is done to encourage
nature to keep what is rightfully hers: selecting
the best rootstocks, a conservation bank of
vine stocks unique to the Sauternes area and
a grafting house where species are identified
and replacements propagated. Similarly, the
presence of a 100% bio purification unit, the
absence of “chaptalisation” (added sugar per
The 15th century building at Guiraud and its French style garden.