A Path to Wine: An Interview with Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse

Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse is the winemaker at St-Emilion's Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarrosse, taking the reins as co-director – alongside Prisca Courtin-Clarins – in April 2021, just before the 2020 en primeur campaign.

This 6.24ha estate on prime limestone plateau terroir, a Premier Grand Cru Classé B property, was put up for sale in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the thirty members on the family board. However, Joséphine wanted to keep it in the family and fought hard to do so, backed financially by the Clarins family who believed in her vision for Beauséjour.

Growing up at her family estate of Château de Musset in Lalande-de-Pomerol, Joséphine went on to study wine production and commerce in both Bordeaux and Burgundy before travelling and making wine in Napa, in Hawkes Bay in New Zealand, and in Mexico, returning to Bordeaux in 2016. Her first role in Bordeaux was Technical Director of Château du Taillan in the Médoc and from here she moved to Group Bernard Magrez at Château Les Grands Chênes, before taking up her current role at Beauséjour. Last year she was crowned one of France’s 50 best winemakers.

Welcome Joséphine, would you mind sharing a little bit about your upbringing in Bordeaux and about your family history?

I grew up in Lalande-de-Pomerol because my father was a state manager of two wineries, one in Lalande-de-Pomerol and the other in Puisseguin. As a lawyer, my mother was not in the wine business, but I grew up inside the world of wine learning from my father about the different steps of the growing season and winemaking process. I watched my father and could see his devotion to viticulture, and how much hard work went into it. I remember my father working weekends and even during the night. It was because of this, and my love of studying, that I decided I wanted to be a vet rather than a winemaker. I was the kind of child that loved to learn about everything, and that initially took me to veterinary school.

Tell us a bit about your grandparents and their role in your wine journey?

My grandparents on both sides taught me a lot. On my father’s side they were estate managers of Beauséjour and on my mother’s side they owned a small vineyard in the South of France. Both sides taught me different things however, though they were quite complimentary. On my father’s side it was all about technique. On my mother’s side it was more about tasting the wine, the feelings that arise, and intuition.

What are your memories of Beauséjour as a child?

In France, or especially in Bordeaux, it’s traditional to have a ceremonial lunch on Sundays with wine. I have this memory of my grandfather opening and pouring Beauséjour around the table. He would speak for at least 15 minutes about the smell and qualities for the wine, which was hard when you couldn’t drink it as it was sitting in front of you. The speech was the same year on year!

Do you recall a key moment when your love of wine began?

I don’t recall a time that I woke up and decided I wanted to become a winemaker; I think it came little by little. I really enjoyed my veterinary studies however I felt something was missing. After studying at veterinary school, I went to engineering school which I enjoyed as I learnt a lot about chemistry, plants and a bit about viticulture. I found this side of it interesting, and it showed me how when working in wine, no day will be the same. From this point on my goal was to be in the wine business. I joined winemaker school and after finishing decided I was too young to start work straight away. Instead, I wanted to learn about different sides of the wine business, so I went to Burgundy and joined the International School of Trade and Marketing in Wine. I found this interesting however I preferred the technical side, so I went back to that.

Tell us about what you studied at university and your travels after university, making wine in the USA, New Zealand and Mexico. What did your travels teach you, in a nutshell?

I went to Napa Valley for an internship while I was in winemaker school for about 8 months and then went back to Burgundy. I studied there for a year then went to Vosne-Romanée for a year. I started to miss working abroad as I loved my experience in Napa and had the opportunity to go to New Zealand where I stayed for about 5 or 6 months. I then came back to Bordeaux and went to Mexico for a few months. I returned to Bordeaux in 2015. I was considering going to Burgundy as I enjoyed my experience there. However, I was offered a full-time job in Bordeaux, so I decided to stay.

Interestingly, I was working with Bordeaux varieties through the entirety of my travels: in Hawkes Bay it was Cabernet, Merlot, a small amount of Malbec as well as Syrah. In Mexico it was Merlot and Cabernet however as it was a new winery, they were planning to plant Syrah as well as the season is quite hot, a lot hotter than in Bordeaux. I came to understand lots about wine from my travels: first about the expression of the varietal and how it is so dependent on the terroir, and the technique. In Burgundy I was learning more about extraction oak selection than in Napa or Hawkes Bay.

My main learning stemmed from my exposure to the incredible wines that were being produced outside of France. In Bordeaux particularly we have great terroir, and we are famous for our wine. But there are still plenty of people that need to understand that great wines are being made elsewhere too. Winemakers abroad have learnt a lot about technique and combinations between rootstocks and varietals. This makes it now very hard to tell the difference between Bordeaux wines and foreign wines in a blind tasting. Instead of being intimidated by this I feel we should see it as a challenge for us to stay competitive and to improve our techniques and styles. I think this all proves the importance of young winemakers travelling to understand wine in different regions. My father was so surprised when he came to Napa and impressed by the quality of wine there, particularly as he’s part of the generation that believed France to be a superior wine producer to other worldwide regions.

On top of this I realised that the charm of Bordeaux is the effect the vintage has on the wine. Because we can’t use irrigation or techniques that can perhaps be used in other areas to reduce the effect of the vintage, you still have good and bad vintages which is not so obvious in the rest of the world.

Did you know you were going to return to Bordeaux, or did you want to settle elsewhere to make wine?

I had the opportunity to work in New Zealand however I stayed because I had a boyfriend at the time in Bordeaux and felt bad for leaving him again! I missed working abroad because everything was new wherever I went so I was learning all the time and meeting new people. But it got to a point where I felt I needed to return to France.

Could you tell us about your first job in Bordeaux as technical director?

At the beginning I didn’t want to work in Beauséjour because I wanted to learn as much as I could in Bordeaux and felt I couldn’t do that within a family business. I wanted to find a job on the Right Bank however I didn’t get very far because of my connection with Beauséjour so I went to the Left Bank. I was then lucky to find an opportunity with Armelle Cruse from Château du Taillan because she needed someone to do the technical parts. I really enjoyed my experience there as they produce white wine as well, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, so I made that for three and a half years. I think that experience taught me a lot about decision-making as when you have less money available your decisions must be managed carefully. From then on in my career, my priorities were considered with more care, regardless of if I had money. In 2017 it was quite difficult because of the frost, we lost 90% of the vineyard, then in 2018 we have a lot mid-year pressure. However, it produced a nice vintage. In 2019 we had a heatwave at the end of the season. I learnt a lot from that as well. It was at this point that I was hired by Bernard Magrez.

At what stage did you realise you had to try to keep Beauséjour in the family?

I always knew I was going to be back there, but I wanted my own experiences beforehand so that I felt legitimate. I planned to be part of the company in my 40s, however when my family started to discuss selling the property I realised I would never have access to this kind of terroir again which made me really sad, so. I started looking for a solution to keep it.

With the financial backing of Prisca Courtin-Clarins, you won the battle for Beauséjour three years ago, and you and Prisca are now co-directors of the estate. How has that been?

It’s great, I’m really lucky to have found this family. Prisca’s partnership is perfect because she is very business savvy so it’s always interesting seeing her vision for Beauséjour for the next 5, 10 or 20 years. It also works well because she trusts me, so all the technical parts are left to me. This trust does mean I put a lot of pressure on myself because I don’t want to disappoint her. If I ever need her advice, I just call her – we work together very well, we’re really a perfect dynamic duo! I’ve learnt a lot from her and her from me. She also asks a lot of questions about the process in return. I find it so interesting, but I can’t explain a lot of the process due to Bordeaux tradition!

How have your family responded to this success and what role has your father played from the sidelines?

At the beginning they were surprised as I’d kept the partnership completely secret until April 2021. They are proud of me and happy because they also weren’t losing the property. They visit often, particularly my father who’s here every two or three days. It can be nice however I have to admit that it can occasionally be too much! He’s happy because the door is always open for him which I felt was important and he gives me a lot of advice because he’s so familiar with the history of the property. Sometimes we’ll disagree but he knows that today I’m the boss. He may get a bit upset if I don’t listen to him and will leave me to it, but he always comes back the next day.

What challenges did you have to overcome as you took on the reins in the middle of the en primeur campaign in April 2021?

It was quite difficult because the 2020 en primeur was during the same period as the 2021 growing season, which was already going to be hard because we had a lot of pressure in the climate and frost. En primeur was also difficult because it’s hard to speak about a wine that you didn’t make, especially because I was working at Bernard Magrez, not in Beauséjour so not all decisions were down to me. I also didn’t know how I wanted to express the 2020 vintage which made things more complicated.

Presenting the 2021 was easier however, I didn’t manage the beginning of the growing season as I took over the property in April of 2021. For me the pruning is the most important part of the winemaking process. The first wine that I really made by myself was the 2022. Little by little I knew what I wanted to make and the 2023 really confirmed the style that I wanted to achieve with Beauséjour.

I understand that your focus in the vineyards has been on observation and intuition. What have you taken away from closely observing your 6ha of vines at Beauséjour over the last three years? What, if anything, do you plan to change in your approach to viticulture?

Even though it’s quite a small vineyard, we have very specific parts. You have the limestone plateau, you have the slope, and you have the bottom of the slope. Over the past three years I’ve observed a lot about these different areas because there are different expressions of each terroir, the different rootstock, of the vigour of the vine. Little by little you begin to manage your vineyard more precisely. But what’s important is each vintage has been different so we’re learning new things as we go along.

For example, in 2022 we harvested most of the vineyard at the same time as the Merlot but at different points for the 2023 as the maturities were different. That’s why it’s so interesting to work in wine because every year it’s totally different. Especially now with global warming, we’re experiencing a lot of extremes. Sometimes you have frost, sometimes you have heatwaves. When people ask me, particularly during en primeur, which vintage I would compare to the 2023, I can’t do it because they are all so different. We’ve had to adapt our management of the vineyard from how my father managed it in his generation because he had a method that worked then, whereas I have to observe, go outside and change with the seasons and the climate.

If you had to sum up your ethos for Beauséjour in a few sentences, what would they be?

I think for me, this is the project of my life. Even if it’s really challenging and I spend a lot of time working in and representing Beauséjour I have to be there. I think Prisca’s and my goals are the same. We want to make Beauséjour one of the iconic wines. I would be very happy if it’s a wine that collectors seek out or if people say that they just want to taste it once in their life. I think Prisca and I are aware that we have a lot of work to do but we’re doing everything we can to reach our goal. I’m sure we’ll be there one day.

And to finish off, what wine is in your fridge right now?

That’s a good question because for the past month I’ve been having my own small wine cellar built in my house and last night I started to put all the bottles in it. I started opening boxes and it was like Christmas! I came across a wine from Domaine François Mikulski, so I put it in my fridge for a lunch I have this week.

Thank you Joséphine for taking the time to talk to us today, it has been a pleasure.

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