de Boüard buys father out at Angelus

Stéphanie de Boüard has bought all of her father Hubert de Boüard’s shares at Château Angelus in St-Emilion, securing her control of the Bordeaux estate.

Stéphanie de Boüard has bought her father’s Angelus shares

Speaking to db during a lunch at The Connaught in London yesterday to celebrate the launch of a new Angelus coffee table book, de Boüard said:

“I bought all of my father’s shares in the company last year to consolidate the business and my cousin Thierry Grenié de Boüard recently joined me in the running of the estate.

“Inheritance tax is a problem in France and we’re keen to keep the château in the family. We’re very proud of the fact that we’re a family run estate.”

de Boüard is due to give birth to a son in June – “the ninth generation is assured” she joked. Like Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, one of de Boüard’s aims at the helm of Angelus is to release less wine en primeur to build up the estate’s stocks.

“I will be keeping more bottled wine back this year. The 2011 vintage is the first release on the market under my control and I kept 20% of it back. My father used to keep back much less and now we have a stock problem, so he supports the move.

“We still believe in the en primeur system but we will start selling a little less of our wines en primeur. It’s important to keep a certain amount back for auctions, receptions and events.”

de Boüard is hopeful for the quality of the 2015 vintage, the first at the estate she was fully involved in. “It was a wonderful experience to work in the vineyards, I didn’t know at the time that it was going to potentially be such a great vintage.

“We had perfect conditions in the summer and at flowering, it was extremely hot in August but we had a stable September, which meant that we could pick our grapes à la carte from plot to plot, to allow some plots to ripen further,” she said.

“We started on 19 September and didn’t finish until 17 October. It was the opposite to 2013 where the weather was getting continually worse and you had to pick even if the grapes weren’t fully ripe.

“We’re working on the blend at the moment. Our Merlot has a lot of freshness and good acidity. The Cabernet Franc is extremely surprising, it’s very supple and delicate,” she added.

Having released a bespoke black bottle etched with 21.7-carat gold for the 2012 vintage, Angelus’ 2013 label uses an old fashioned printing method and has an embossed bell. “The changes are very subtle but it’s fun to be able to innovate,” de Boüard told db.

She also spoke of a desire to fine tune the grand vin through less time in barrel and a less high percentage of new French oak.

“Our barrel ageing could be shorter and the use of new oak could be reduced – at the moment we use 100% new French oak but I’d like to experiment with 90% and 80%,” she said.

“The grand vin spends 22 months in oak, which leads to an intense wine, but it’s got enough fruit so it can handle the oak. We could be making something smoother in terms of wood tannins early on in its life to make the wines more accessible at a younger age,” she added.