At first glance, visitors to Château Margaux may not notice any difference. The famed estate still remains dominated by the 19th-century, neo-Palladian style villa, which appears on the labels of its prized winning Bordeaux. Yet the winery has recently been brought into the 21st century with new buildings designed by high-profile architect Norman Foster and his firm, Foster + Partners.The idea for Nouveau Chai, as the large new winery is known, was born eight years ago. “We needed more space for our R&D,” explains Château Margaux’s current owner Corinne Mentzelopoulos. “We also wanted to bring the cellar for our white wine, Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux, back into the heart of our facilities. And, finally, we needed more vats of different sizes in order to improve our very stringent selection among the different plots.”The question was how the addition should look, as the new building is adjacent to existing buildings, which also needed to be renovated. One thing Mentzelopoulos was sure of: “It was strictly impossible to consider building a new structure that would try to look like the older one.”Lord Foster, who has won both the Pritzker and the Prince of Asturias prizes, visited the estate and according to Mentzelopoulos quickly grasped the overall specific elegance and harmony of the architecture: “an amazing human quality of his, when you think of the many architects who have made it a point to leave a mark of their ego on their new structures, with no respect of the past.”Such egotism was not for Foster. His aim from the start was to blend in. This may seem an impossible task, given the stark contrast between the urban modernism that has brought the architect such acclaim and the elegance of the château, declared a historic monument by the French government 70 years ago. Designed by Louis Combes with a peristyle envisaged as a tribute to the Parthenon and known locally as Bordeaux’s very own Versailles, the château, and other historic buildings on the estate, could hardly be more different from Foster’s signature high-rise structures, such as 30 St. Mary Axe (fondly known as “the Gherkin”) in London, the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, and the Hearst Tower in New York.Yet Foster’s Nouveau Chai building manages to keep a low profile. The high-tech stainless-steel fermentation vats for the white wine can be seen through a vast expanse of glass. Its huge roof looks impossibly supported on tree-shaped columns, a spectacular feat of engineering, and the reclaimed roof tiles fit perfectly with its surroundings. “It just feels like it has always been there, and that is the true sign of Norman Foster’s talent,” Mentzelopoulos notes.Foster says he drew his ideas from several sources, starting with the wine itself and “the wonderful heritage of the ‘big barn.’” He wanted to replicate what writer Bernard Rudofsky called “architecture without architects,” anonymous design that embraces everything from windmills to bridges. “At Margaux, I was inspired by a communal lunch in the open space under the great roof of one of the structures during the grape harvesting. By investigating ruins elsewhere on the site, it was possible to recycle enough tiles to create another major roof in the same vernacular. At first glance there does not appear to be a new building. This is deliberate, and it is only on closer inspection that the new addition is revealed. In other words the big statement here is one of understatement.”Now that the new building has been through its first harvest, it will definitely improve an already prestigious product, says consultant Richard Bampfield, who holds the internationally recognized qualification Master of Wine and has visited the château many times: “Margaux is a large estate, with a patchwork of different terroirs and classic Bordeaux vines, some younger, some very old. First, the new winery will allow the makers to get to know each parcel of vines better. Second, it will allow for much more precise blending of the lots. Château Margaux just does things extraordinarily well.’’That has not always been the case, however. In the 1970s, Château Margaux, along with the rest of the Bordeaux industry, suffered the depredations of mildew, phylloxera, and recession. It was a low point for an estate about whose wine U.S. President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1784, “There couldn’t be a better bottle of Bordeaux” and which went on to be ranked in the following century as one of the premier crus (first growth) of the region.Fortunately, the nadir of its fortunes occurred just as André Mentzelopoulos, Corinne’s father, was looking for a new challenge. The château’s Ionic columns appealed to the Hellenic pride of the Greek-born French entrepreneur, who had interests in shipping and retail. He bought the estate in 1977 for a reported $16 million and introduced what were literally root-and-branch changes at the vineyard. On his death just three years later, Corinne took over, overseeing the completion, in 1982, of the new underground cellar her father had begun and hiring master vintner Paul Pontallier the following year. The 1990 vintage was given a perfect score by wine critic Robert Parker.Château Margaux’s best wines are the preserve of the wealthy; a case of the 2000 vintage taken directly from the estate’s cellars sold for a total of $36,750 at Sotheby’s New York in October 2015 during an event to mark the Margaux bicentenary. But even for those who can’t afford that tariff Margaux has much to offer. Free one-hour tours for limited numbers include the chance to try the estate’s second wine, the Pavillon Rouge, and to explore the 1815 winery, refurbished as part of Foster’s plan — which has oak vats for grapes and is totally devoted to the production of red wine — as well as the new structures Foster designed, which in addition to the Nouveau Chai includes an underground Vinothèque, so as not to spoil the landscape. Large enough, at more than 100 feet long, to hold above 200,000 bottles, this “wine library” is located out of the flooding area of the Gironde and clad in thick concrete to provide safe, environmentally stable storage for the collection of celebrated Château Margaux bottles.“The wine library keeps our wines in the best conditions of calm, humidity and darkness,” Mentzelopoulos says. “In some cases, our best vintages can improve for another 50 years in the cellar. It is one of the peculiarities of the great wines of Bordeaux: They get better as they age. I sometimes wish it were the same for human beings!”
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