Bubble feared as Bordeaux booms

PIERRE Lurton looks across the neat green rows of vines that have made his fortune from the top of the lavish new winery inaugurated at his Bordeaux chateau yesterday.

Amid the gently undulating fields of Saint Emilion, the modern architecture of the building that will house the vats and cellar at the hallowed Cheval Blanc vineyard stands out as a work of genius to some and an eyesore to others. Yet no one can dispute its importance.

This is the symbol of Bordeaux's boom, one of many projects transforming celebrated vineyards that are seeking a glamorous look to accompany success without precedent in their millennial history.

"When I first came here 20 years ago we sold our wine for (the equivalent of) E40 ($55) a bottle," says Lurton, the managing director of Chateau Cheval Blanc. "When the price reached E200 a bottle it seemed expensive and when it reached E300, I thought, 'This can't be true'."

The 2009 vintage went for E600 a bottle and 2010 is likely to reach a similar price as demand for France's most famous bottles continues to grow in China.

Some critics say wine lovers will turn their backs on claret if the rise continues, but there is no sign of that for now. Indeed, les grand chateaux have become cash machines. Cheval Blanc, for instance, made E14 million on sales of E22m last year, according to Nouvel Observateur, a news magazine. Chateau Lafite Rothschild made a profit of E70.2m on sales of E80.8m. The Lurton dynasty, which has been making wine in Bordeaux for four generations, has never known anything like it, and neither has the landscape. Fields unchanged for centuries are attracting diggers, cranes and men with yellow hats as the top wines seek an image makeover to match their global status.

Jean Nouvel, Mario Botta and Fabien Pedelaborde are among star architects called in to transform modest buildings put up by producers who were more concerned with grapes than stones.

Nowhere is the change starker than at Cheval Blanc, where Bernard Arnault and Albert Frere, the billionaire owners, used Christian de Portzamparc, an award-winning architect, to design the winery. Critics said the curving white walls and the grass-and-plant covered roof sit uneasily next to a 19th-century chapel, but Lurton is enthusiastic. "It is chic and sober, just like the wine itself. It's not just the technique that matters, it's the choreography of the gesture."

With the new building comes new security. Bottles will be engraved and microchips placed in cases so that purchasers know that they are buying Cheval Blanc, not an Asian-made fake.

Yet there is concern that success may have gone to the heads of winemakers. Robert Parker, the most influential critic in the world, warned that Bordeaux was creating a speculative bubble. "The prices seem too high," he says.

Lurton disagrees. He says his chateau once sold to France and the rest of Europe, but now sells to the world. "We only produce 80,000 bottles a year and, on a planetary scale, that's nothing."

He has a point. The 2009 Chateau Latour, for instance, cost E600 a bottle, but it is already changing hands at almost E2000. Its value is likely to rise further before it is drunk in five or more years.