Ep 2334 Discovering Château Cantemerle in Bordeaux with Laure Canu | On the Road with Stevie Kim

So one last thing. Mhmm. For the younger audience that we have out there, younger women, especially. What advice would you give them if they're interested or they're thinking about getting into the wine industry because the wine business, there are challenging times at the moment. Right? How would you advise a younger female to broach the wine business. That's such a difficult question. Don't do it. Don't do it. It's not too late. Welcome to another episode of On The Road Edition, hosted by Stevie Kim each week Steve travels to incredible wine destinations interviewing some of the Italian wine scene's most interesting personalities, talking about wines, the foods as well as the incredible travel destinations. Welcome back. My name's Stevie Kim, and this is Italian wine podcast. On the road in Bordeaux. So our Bordeaux series continues with Laud Kanu. She's the general manager of, okay, it's the pronunciation time of French. Okay. How do you say the winery? Chateau Contumel. Italians would say, it's the same meaning. So thank you for having us today. Very happy to have you. Thank you. Okay. So Laura, for our audience, especially the Italian wine audience worldwide who are less familiar with you. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? Oh, yeah. A skinny skinny not since we you are in full. I'm losing my life. Okay. So I'm love. Very nice to be with you. I've been working in a bottle for almost ten years. And before that, I used to be a lawyer in Paris. Mhmm. So it's a new life for me and a very exciting life. And I'm so happy to be here in this beautiful winery. But did you practice law? Actually, you say you are Four four years. What kind of law? Business law. Okay. So nothing. Yeah. Something very stressful and You're right. So happy to be. Right. So prior to coming to Continental, you were at, of course, Angelo, one of the most iconic wineries in this area. Yeah. And so why did you decide to come to this winery. What did you make that jump? I was very lucky because I worked for beautiful wineries. As you said, I started with Chateau Vaischevelle and then Pician Contes. So it was a very amazing experiences. And then Chateau Contamal, it was a great opportunity for me to be in charge of this property, of this winery, and to be able to have my own strategy. And I realized that the quality of the wine of Chateau Contamal is very consistent but I knew that there was room for improvement. So it's very exciting to have this ability, this capacity to improve the quality of the wine. So, of course, in Bordeaux, everyone has a chateau. Okay. What's so special about this chateau. This chateau is very special. I would say for two reasons, the first is chateau concealer might be one of the oldest winery in Bordeaux, more than one thousand years old. It's very rich in terms of history, heritage, and also this place is very special because we have one hundred hectares of vineyards, but also one hundred hectares of nature. Meadows, forests, rivers. So it's like a bubble just at the doorstep of the city. Give me a general overview of how many labels, the production, what type of wines you produce. This winery produced wines with one hundred acres of vineyards. It's located in the Omeidoc appylation. So it's in the thousand part of the Omeidoc appylation. It's a classified cross, reasonably eighteen fifty five classification. Right. The famous one. And the rare fact, our vineyard remains the same since the classification. So we have a very unique terroir, a gravely terroir, and reproduce, which is Chateau Consamer, and the second label, which is Lezali de Continer, and it's mostly produced out of cabernet sauvignon. So it's the most important grape variety here in the medac, and it produced beautiful wines in our water. Are you producing any white wines? We don't. We don't have any wine. You know in the rest of the world. It's very small. Yeah. Where rest of the world, people are drinking white wines. I know. I know. Well, we are very, you know, focusing on Cabernes Avenue. So it's speaking of tradition. Alright. The wine industry historically is a very male dominated industry, especially in Bordeaux. It is. I think you're one of the very few female CEOs Is that correct? It is some CEOs in Bordeaux, but not many. Yeah. But, I was very lucky because, Philip De Maureen, who was my producer. He worked here for thirty years, and, before I arrived at Guantanamo, he introduced me to the team, and it was very male, dominating. And they all welcomed me very warmly, and they were very happy to work me, and I have a wonderful team. They work here for a very long time, but they are very open minded. So it's a good combination, and I think that they are very okay with a female kind of thing. And when you start, you are even much younger. Yeah. You are under forty quite young also. You you don't only represent the female leadership in Bordeaux, but also the next generation, if you will. Right? Yeah. When I arrived at Chateau, I was very happy because, many young women emails me or, yeah, sent me messages to say that it's like, yeah, Anespoix. It's very, inspiring for them to see that a woman is able to achieve and to have such a important position in Bardo. And, I think it's important also to realize that, broadly is very open minded and, yeah, there are many different people coming from different countries, different background here in Bordeaux. So I think it's encouraging for Bordeaux. So you've been here for four years. Right. So what kind of changes have you made since you've arrived and what additional changes are you planning going forward? The most important thing I would say is, that we are renovating all the winery, everything. Mhmm. But mostly, the technical facility, because we had a winemaking facility that was a bit, old. I would say they did back to the eighteen, to the eighties. Sorry. And, so we decided to renovate all the winery. And next July, we will have this amazing new facility that will enable us to enhance the quality of the wine. So it's a So it's a wine wine making facility. Yeah. And it which changed completely the quality of the wine, the way we work, and it's like a Christmas in July, you know, for the team, it's a wonderful gift, and, I'm sorry we it will change many, many things in the way which we work in the setup. Including the style of the wine. Is that do you think? It's not a revolution, especially in terms of style because I really love as a style of Continal and, as What is the style of Contima? Because, you know, I mean, Bordeaux, We call it the bordeaux blend. Right? Yep. Okay. I'm going to ask your cheek question. You have a blind tasting. Yep. And you have twenty bordeauxs. Okay. How can you tell your wine from the others? How how can you recognize it in a blind tasting? I would say that Consomel has never been a trendy wine. It's never been a fashionable wine. So it always remained faithful to its philosophy. And it's always very elegant, harmonious, pure. You also have this, floral nose with valet Mhmm. Which is very special. And, I think that our terroir, the fact that no one in the history of Consomel bought any parcel, you know, somewhere in the Omidock, in the appalachian. It always remains this very terroir. Mhmm. This is a very unique one. So it's continuous. Yeah. It's continuous and the philosophy remains the same and the style of the wine remains the same. So we are going to improve the quality, but it's not a revolution because I really want to remain faithful to the history and, to the heritage of, of the past. So one last thing. Mhmm. For the younger audience that we have out there, younger women, especially. What advice would you give them if they're interested or they're thinking about getting into the wine industry? Because the wine business there are challenging times at the moment. Right? How would you advise a younger female to broach the wine business? That's a difficult question. Don't do it. Don't do it. It's not too late. No. No. I think it's, no. It's a wonderful, world, a wonderful industry because there are so many different positions You can do anything. You can work with, with in communication, within production, strategy, management, finance. So, no, it's very often. And, I think it's very important to know the people and, to work like to start maybe in the vineyard and to try a different position, to start, like, in the locked position, and don't hesitate to be very curious, very open, and, to meet people, to discuss, to talk, because it's, I think for me, the most important thing in this industry is the human part. So it's very important to create links with the wine growers with different, people in the vineyard. Okay. Well, that I think on that note, I think we can close. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. She is the general manager of Chateau. Chateau. And it's a wrap. And let's do a chinching style. What are we drinking? Two thousand twenty four. Two thousand twenty four. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you for joining us on another episode of on the road edition hosted by Stevie Kim. Join her again next week for more interesting content on the Italian wine scene. You can also find us at Italian wine podcast dot com or wherever you get your pods. You can check out our YouTube channel, Mamma jumbo shrimp to watch these interviews and the footage captured at each location. Changing.