MARKETING / BRAND BUILDER: The right mix

A blend of Bordeaux brilliance and Argentina’s finest terroir, Cheval des Andes is a combination to savour. By Patrick Schmitt

Inspiration for new brands or refreshed designs tends to come from extraordinary sources. Sheridan’s cream liqueur, with its separate compartments for the black and white component of the drink, was apparently inspired by a pint of Guinness at the airport, and Rozès’ Colour Collection by a corrupted PDF which displayed the proposed Port bottle in bright red. Outside the industry, the sculpted look of the TVR Chimera sports car was inspired by an employee’s dog who took a bite out of a foam model on the front end, driver’s side. The effect was so appealing a similar hole was made on the passenger’s side, and hence the finished car’s deeply indented spotlights.

Then there’s Cheval des Andes – a Bordeaux “first growth” from Argentina. It seems an unusual, even obscure concept, until you analyse the inspiration behind it. Pierre Lurton, president at Cheval Blanc, was looking for the estate’s lost Malbec.

Phylloxera devastated St Emilion’s vineyards, once covered with Malbec, and replanting after the root-feeding aphid’s appearance in the 1860s was mostly with Merlot – Malbec didn’t take to grafting.

Lurton’s hunt in the late 90s for a touch of St Emilion’s history took him outside France and eventually to Argentina, where he discovered ungrafted Malbec, in particular, the 76-year-old Las Compuertas Vineyard in Vistalba, Mendoza. Hence in 1999, a joint venture between Mendoza’s Terrazas de los Andes winery and Bordeaux’s Cheval Blanc was born.

The first commercial release of Cheval des Andes was 2001, although wines were made in 1999 and 2000.

“We wanted a style to the brand and we wanted to see if we could reach consistency,” explains Nicolas Audebert, winemaker for Cheval des Andes, a Frenchman who was previously at Krug – which along with Terrazas and Cheval Blanc is part of the Moët-Hennessy portfolio. However, the blends do vary very slightly each year, with differing proportions of Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, not forgetting the peppering of Petit Verdot, depending on the vintage.

“We won’t go higher than 60% Malbec,” explains Audebert, who ascribes the rich fruit to this varietal, structure to Cabernet and “freshness and punch” to the Petit Verdot. “Malbec is the density, it is Argentinean and it is what Cheval Blanc was looking for,” he adds. This sentiment perhaps explains why the proportion of Malbec has been steadily increasing since the first wine was made – initially Cabernet was the dominant varietal in purely percentage terms and now it’s Malbec.

Ironically, although the venture is described as Bordeaux expertise applied to Argentina’s best terroir, the sharing of winemaking know-how doesn’t appear to be one way – the French arm of the operation has been learning lessons too. Lurton admits that his experience of Mendoza helped in 2003 at St Emilion, a famously hot year. As he says, “we had a little bit of Argentina in Bordeaux”.

The two places are obviously closer than geography would imply.

© db July 2007