Jean-Louis Croquet is a happy winemaker. He has just learned that his rosé “Les Abeillons”, in the Coteaux Varois en Provence appellation, is one of the best rosés in the world at the Cave de la Cité du Vin in Bordeaux. Pierre-Antoine Thiot’s team of sommeliers has chosen to maintain this wine from the Var hinterland, among the 800 references of its “universal cellar”, which offers 600 foreign wines from 80 countries. For the fourth consecutive year, Château Thuerry wine takes center stage in Bordeaux, served by the glass in the most visited wine bar in France.
Winemaker pruning pattern
A publicity stunt is always welcome, even when your name is Croquet and you produce an “Exception2” red wine, which American director Francis Ford Coppola loves. A longtime friend. Entering the business fray in 1973, the ex-boss of the TNS-Sofres polling institute had predicted it, during the takeover, in 1997, of Château Thuerry: “I wanted to make an exceptional red, the equivalent of a Château Cheval Blanc (Grand Cru Classé de Saint-Emilion, Editor’s note) in Provence”, says Jean-Louis Croquet. And to probe the real motivations of his conversion, at 57, to become a winegrower: “When you work in companies listed on the stock exchange, with the functions of CEO, these are only functions. The return to the land, the choice to be a winegrower, that’s a real job”, he plants.
Always looking for new challenges, this former passionate rugby player has always played as a team. It is therefore with his technical director, the oenologist Olivier Felis, that he shares the fruits of a flawless investment for the revival of the vineyards of Provence. Next step for Château Thuerry: following organic and a range of natural wines (without added sulphites), the conversion in 2024, from the 40-hectare vineyard to biodynamics.
Jean-Louis Croquet in the “cathedral” cellar of Château ThuerryValerie Le Parc.
The AOP Coteaux Varois en Provence celebrates its 30th anniversary
“To live happy, live hidden”. The adage still applies, for the moment, to the Coteaux Varois en Provence, a remote mountain vineyard in the heart of green Provence where the stars of showbiz have come to invest in recent years: George Clooney at the Canadel estate, George Lucas at Margüi Castle, or more recently, the presidential couple Sarkozy-Bruniassociated with Stéphane Courbit for the takeover of the Cantarelle estate.
The appellation, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of its creation in 1993, covers an area of 3,000 hectares, of which 1,300 hectares are organic. 65 private cellars and 11 cooperative cellars produce the equivalent of 18 million bottles (136,000 hectoliters), mainly rosés (93%), with undeniable advantages: an average altitude of 350 meters above sea level conducive to the development fresh and digestible wines, with preserved acidity.
A Provence without drum or trumpet, dotted with a string of pretty estates: Domaine des Deffends, Château Bellini and Mira Luna – the two properties of Tom Bove -, Blacailloux, Château de l’Escarelle, Château des Annibals, or Château La Calisse at Patricia Ortelli, organic pioneer in these mountains.
