The pink of ambition

It takes a lot of courage to launch a €190 ($208) rosé – especially one that does not come from Provence. But Gérard Bertrand, the man behind the new Clos du Temple from Cabrières in Languedoc Roussillon, has never lacked courage. And, over the past quarter of a century, he has used that characteristic to build one of the world’s most dynamic wine businesses.

Bertrand would stand out in any industry, in any country. Physically, he’s almost 2m tall and has the kind of authoritative features that are familiar from statues of Roman emperors. When he quite baldly explains that he set out to produce “the best, the most iconic rosé in the world – a wine that would keep for ten or 15 years and develop tertiary flavours,” it’s like hearing an athlete explaining his ambitions to break a world record. And when he talks about having failed in his first attempt in 2017 because he picked the Grenache too ripe, before explaining how he built the 2018 wine, he could be describing a training regime.

Ambition and drive

The reference to sport is not accidental. Before he launched his wine business, Gérard Bertrand was one of his country’s rising stars in rugby, a game with a near-religious following in his part of the south-west of France. Like a faster, more fluid version of American football, it differs significantly in not having protective padding, or the in-match direction from the coach. Size and physical strength are crucial but so are courage, intelligence and teamwork.

Bertrand’s earliest ambitions were to succeed at cycling, at which he won several junior awards before turning to the team game for which his father Georges had a passion. It was Georges Bertrand, too, who also handed on his skills as a winemaker at the family estate, Domaine de Villemajou at Boutenac in Corbières. The young Bertrand was ten when he helped with his first harvest in 1975, and remembers his father telling him that, “Nobody explained life to me, but when you are 60 years old you’ll have 50 years of experience of winemaking.”

Bertrand senior’s ambitions stretched a long way beyond the cheap table wine-focused industry in which he had grown up. His ambition for his region was to create strong appellations and individual estates that could be seen as grands crus in their own right. At the time, there were not many wine professionals in Languedoc Roussillon who shared that view. His father was “20 years ahead of his time” when he bought Domaine de Villemajou in 1973, Bertrand says.

This was the background against which, in 1984, at the age of 19, and while studying for a business degree, he joined the local rugby club RC Narbonne. He climbed the ranks to become its youngest captain before moving to play for the Stade de France team in Paris, where he held the same role. He had only been playing for Narbonne for three years when his father died in a motor accident. Bertrand was, unsurprisingly, hugely affected by this loss and recalls becoming increasingly focused on not only fulfilling his father’s ambition for his estate and its wines, but also doing it in a way that was true to its soil.

Despite this commitment, however, he was not ready to walk away from rugby, which he continued to play alongside his winemaking, until his career was brought to a premature end by a severe injury. In 1993, while continuing to run the family domaine, Bertrand launched his own, far more ambitious, enterprise, at the heart of which lay a growing number of other estates.

Growth spurt

The first he bought, in 1995, was Domaine de Cigalus in the IGP Aude-Hauterive, which he made his home and where he would subsequently begin an ongoing and increasingly intense relationship with organic and biodynamic winemaking. Two years later, he bought Château Laville-Bertrou in the then under-appreciated higher-altitude Minervois region of La Livinière which, in 1999, gained a grand cru appellation of its own. The estate’s 75ha were divided by old dry stone walls and had what Bertrand describes as a “unique” mixture of marl and limestone. “It felt peaceful,” Bertrand says. “It’s a very special place”. This combination of terroir and spirituality explains the background to the biodynamically grown Clos d’Ora wines that were released in 2014 at a regionally unprecedented price of more than €150 a bottle. They were produced in facility with a fermentation building that is “in tune with cosmic influences” and has its own meditation room.

At the other end of the scale is Château l’Hospitalet, the lively mother ship of the Gérard Bertrand operation. Situated in the small appellation of La Clape, overlooking the Mediterranean ocean, it is the home of wines including a premium red called Hospitalas, a restaurant, hotel and events including festivals celebrating jazz and truffles. “Our region’s art de vivre – lifestyle – is central to what we do,” Bertrand explains, “and wine tourism that brings us thousands of people is a big part of that.”

Wine tourism is still a work in progress in France, and Bertrand is excited about the potential of his region to offer experiences to visitors that will introduce them to its traditions and potential in food and wine. “I learned about what you can do over 20 years ago when I visited Robert Mondavi in Napa,” he says.

Other estates include Château la Sauvageonne in the Terrasses du Larzac region and Cité de Carcassonne at Domaine de l’Estagnère, where Bertrand is especially proud of a zero-sulphur wine launched in 2017. “One of the most exciting things we’ve done,” he says. “A wine to change people’s ideas.”

But the volumes of these estate wines are necessarily low, and their distribution is often limited to specialist retailers and the on-trade. For the broader market, Bertrand has a range of very different wines, some of which are also pioneering: “Innovation is in our DNA,” he says. In France in particular, using the technological expertise from which Domaine de l’Estagnère has benefited, he has more or less created a market segment with his Naturae range of zero added-sulphur wines. Sales of these exceed 250,000 cases which, when taken alongside the Naturalys organic range, makes Bertrand a leader in the field of ‘green’ wine.

In the US, however, the colour with which Gérard Bertrand is most associated is pink. “We can make rosé in Languedoc that is as good as – no, better than – many in Provence,” he says. But making and selling can be very different skills, especially in a market as competitive as North America. “For the Côtes des Roses, we wanted a bottle that people would notice and not forget.” Today, its tall conical packaging is to be found in almost every major US retail chain. “People buying it are not looking for Provence. They want a vin de plaisir – a wine that gives pleasure.”

As a former team captain, Bertrand understands that victories often require efforts that are not always obvious to the spectators. So, while the success of Côtes des Roses can be attributed to the quality and style of the wine and the distinctive bottle in which it is sold, it also owes much to the routes to market Bertrand has created for it. Unlike most comparable brands that depend on US distributors, the Gérard Bertrand wines benefit from the company having opened its own office there.

Thinking pink

The Côtes des Roses is just one of the rosés in the portfolio. There’s also the bee-friendly organic Or & Azur, the pale Gris Blanc, the sparkling Ballerine from Limoux, and Diving into Hampton Water, the joint venture with the American singer Bon Jovi that was one of the only two rosés to feature in the Wine Spectator’s top 100 list in 2018.

The most ambitious of all is Clos du Temple. Priced to stand alongside Clos d’Ora, it is a co-fermented blend of red and white grapes grown in seven parcels of vines spread across 8ha at an altitude of 200m, overlooking the sea at Cabrières. In 2018, 10,000 bottles were produced. In 2019, that figure should double. The nearest competitor and previous priciest rosé in the world is Sacha Lichine’s Garrus from Château d’Esclans in Provence – which sells for about half the price of Clos du Temple. “That wine,” Bertrand explains, “is a cuvée. Mine is from a single clos, and a unique piece of soil that combines schist and limestone. With the combination of grapes we have, it’s alchemy.”

The barrel-fermented rosé is biodynamically produced. “I believe in it,” he says simply of the Steiner philosophy. “I taste the evidence.”

The synergies of a rugged contact sport like rugby and spirituality are not immediately obvious. But no one who has spent time with Bertrand, read his book Wine, Moon and Stars or heard him talk about the thousands of trees he is planting, will have been left in any doubt about his sincere devotion to the environment, and to his region. As proud as he is of his own wines, when it comes to his corner of France, Bertrand remains a team player. “It is an immense area – the largest in the world – and much of its potential remains to be discovered. There are still so many places to find where you can make really great wine.”

But greatness doesn’t come easily. “It’s about survival. In rugby, there’s no protection. You have to have the will to succeed and to find the solutions that will enable you to do so.”