Liber Pater

WINE TALK
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Jane Anson in an extensive interview with owner/winemaker Loic Pasquet.
Long but interesting.

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I appreciate you sharing this. Tasting Liber Pater is on my bucket list, I am extremely curious about tasting wine from pre-phlox vines. Have you or any other WB’s tried it?

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John have you tried other Franc de Pied wines? There are a handful of very high quality, and affordable, ones in the marketplace. Some are in Loire, by producers like Breton and Plouzeau. Joguet and Baudry made a Franc de Pied cuvĂ©e, but they succumbed to the louse in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Worth tracking down. Of these, Plouzeau makes the finest, plus it actually is super old vine as well. Many Franc de Pied vineyards are science experiments on sandy soils to replicate the ungrafted vine experience. Plouzeau is the real deal, with some vines, I think, over 125 years old. Clos du Jaugueyron in Margaux also has a section of vines of 100+ years, and I recall reading that some are Franc de Pied. I just checked Leve’s website and he does not mention that, so I cannot be certain my memory is correct.

Also worth tracking down mature Colares from Portugal. These are not only Franc de Pied, but if you can grab some of the bottles from the 50s and 60s that remain available, I believe that these are actually pre-Phylloxera vines, so like super old! These vineyards are on the coast of Portugal, where 10-20 feet of top soil is sand, hence not attracting Phylloxera, but then beneath that is all volcanic soils.

I’d love to try Liber Pater, and enjoyed watching that video, but I will not be plonking down that kind of cash!

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This is really helpful, I have not tried any of these wines. Do you have 1-2 favorites + vintage recommendation I should try?

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My favorites are the Joguet and Plouzeau Franc de Pieds but they have kinda become unicorns. If you find one, just grab it.

More readily available is the Breton Franc de Pied, which is not as complex but is quite delicious. Domaine Roche Nueves also makes a delicious Franc de Pied and then a couple of higher-end cuvées, like Les Memories, which have 100+ year vines.

I love the 2014 vintage in Loire, with 2016 just a smidge behind. Critics seem to be fawning over 2018, but I think it is a little ripe. The 2018 may be a better gateway vintage as an introduction.

For Bordeaux, try:

Domaine du Jaugaret
Clos de Jaugueyron (Margaux and Haut Medoc)
Chateau Bel-Air Marquis d’Alegre
Chateau Sociando Mallet

Not Liber Pater, but all iconoclastic and old school.

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If the link doesn’t work, should be readily googleable

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You can also find quite of number of wines from Germany, especially Rieslings, which are “franc de pied”. The labelling you want to look for is “wurzelecht” in this case, loosely translating as “on their real roots”.

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LuĂ­s Pato has a ‘pĂ© franco’ (franc de pied) CuvĂ©e from Quinta do Ribeirinho.

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Probably the cheapest and easiest way to drink some pre-phylloxeric wines is by getting a bottle of Santorini Assyrtiko.

Due to the volcanic soils, phylloxera has never arrived to Santorini (and even if it would, I doubt it would survive there). Although there are many new vineyards, most of them are other varieties - Assyrtiko vines tend to be ridiculously old there.

What’s most interesting, though, is that some vineyards might be “young” yet at the same time centenarian. This is because the vines have been planted there centuries ago, so they have really old root systems. However, once the vine part above ground gets too old (IIRC, somewhere between 70 and 150 years old), it ceases bearing fruit. Normally the vines grow small shoots close to the ground and these are normally trimmed away each year. However, when a vine gets so old it doesn’t bear any fruit, one of these shoots is left to grow into a new vine and the old, gnarly vine basket (kouloura, as the are called in Santorini) is cut off. This means that even if a vine is relatively young, it might have a root system that is centuries old. When we visited there, many producers said that they have multiple vineyards that have been farmed non-stop, never replanted for more than a century, one of them said that one of their vineyards was estimated to be approximately 450 years old. So while the vines themselves might not be 450 yo, they come from the same vines that were planted almost half a millennia ago and they are still actively producing fruit.

And even then, there are actually tons of actually centenarian vineyards in Santorini, meaning that not only the root systems, but also the vines are at least 100 years old. Considering how a good bottle of Santorini Assyrtiko costs around $20-40, they are definitely worth the tariff - especially taking into account how ridiculously labor-intensive winemaking is over there and how minuscule the yields can be (in a normal year 1500-2500 kg/ha, in 2019 some vineyards produced only 600-800 kg/ha).

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Checking out what Jeff has written about the producer; Learn all about Liber Pater Graves, The Complete Guide

This little bit struck my eye: “Liber Pater is one of the first estates in Bordeaux to begin planting grapes that were popular in the pre-phylloxera era, Castet, Marselan, and Tarney Coulant. Those ancient varieties were added to the red blend starting with the 2015 vintage.”

This is the first time I hear Marselan was popular in the pre-phylloxera era, as it is a Cabernet Sauvignon x Grenache crossing, crossed in France in 1961. I wonder which parts of Languedoc, RhĂŽne or Catalonia (places where Marselan is commonly grown) were still pre-phylloxeric in and after the 1960s? :smiley:

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Unless the labeling is different for the export markets, almost none of these actually say wurzelecht on the label, you just have to know what you’re buying.

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This wine is such a scam


  1. No one knows what “ancient” Bordeaux might taste like. Very convenient for a scammer when no one can prove anything.
  2. Loïc has had this marketing speech since the beginning (2003? I remember seing the 2004 for sale on his website a few years back), when he only started adding supposedly older grapes IN 2015! I mean, how can you fall for that??? Blows my mind


Alain

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Lots of Franc de Pied offerings from Willamette Valley.

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An article about Liber Pater in the most recent Robb Report.

Cannot imagine $33,000/bottle.

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Every producer has stories, although Liber Pater’s is more interesting than most.But then, I have always disliked putting down the competition by generalization, and a lot of his throwaways were just that. The wine should stand on its own, and I thought the most interesting paragraph was his response to Neal Martin’s score.

“ Not everyone who tastes Liber Pater is a fan. Wine journalist and critic Neal Martin penned an article in July 2023 for online wine magazine and ratings platform Vinous alleging that Pasquet is “prone to disinforming and gaslighting” and writing that if he were to taste the 2015 blind, he would “guess it to be a decent €30 to €40 Bordeaux” (no more than 45 bucks) that he would “happily drink over a decade,” which he acknowledged “may well be interpreted as damning it with faint praise.” In a terse response, Pasquet tells Robb Report that Martin “never came to the vineyard to understand what we do.”

I never taste “understanding” vineyards, nor stories, but what is in the glass. But at $33k, i am going to taste neither “understanding “ nor what is in the glass.

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of course have never tasted. But find it interesting that it looks on CT/WMJ that these recent vintages of LP that are “worth $33K” seem to auction for under $1K. Older vintages get $2-3K. I’m just going by CT reporting, someone with a full WMJ subscription can check out. But in general asking/full retail is meaningless as to true value.
I also love that Robb Report says it’s only 9 miles from Ch. Yquem. How impressive.
I was also interested to learn that the Golden Vines awards are the Oscars of the wine industry.:slight_smile:

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And that obviously gives it major credibility; well except that even a top vintage of Yquem such as 2001 is available at around 20% of what the LB costs.

But then you are just tasting the wine and missing out on $2500 of “understanding”