Château Valandraud

6 rue Guadet


BP 88

33330 Saint-Émilion

Tél. +33 (0)5 57 55 09 13

thunevin@thunevin.com

www.valandraud.com

Château Valandraud, First great Classified Growth of Saint-Emilion

Get to know the Premier Cru Classé “B”, Château Valandraud in the Saint-Emilion Grand Cru appellation.

The story of Valandraud and its owners is no ordinary one. It's the story of a couple with a passion for wine, completely self-taught, starting out with meagre means but with the ambition of making great wines, initially in confidential quantities. An audacious gamble that paid off thanks to talent, open-mindedness, intelligence, perseverance and an innate sense of commerce. At the end of 1989, the couple acquired a 0.6-hectare micro-parcel in the Fongaban valley in Saint-Émilion, located between Châteaux Pavie-Macquin and La Clotte. Murielle Andraud and Jean-Luc Thunevin then named their brand Valandraud (from the word “val” added to Murielle's maiden name). With the means at their disposal and a garage transformed into a vat room and a micro-cellar for ageing, the couple produced their first vintage, 1991, “the year of the frost”, and launched, without really wanting to, a new trend and a veritable Right Bank phenomenon, which would come to be known as “garage wine”, in other words, micro-cuvées produced in very small quantities. Probably more or less inspired by the first unclaimed “garage wine” in history, Château Le Pin in Pomerol, Valandraud is building its own legend and its own DNA: “To be and to think differently”. The wines vinified and matured in the garage soon wanted to think bigger and become more independent. With the success of the first vintages and the very good reviews received by the profession, including the 1995 acclaimed by Robert Parker, the first vintages sold very well, even rivalling Châteaux Ausone and Cheval Blanc, and enabled the couple to expand by making new acquisitions. The estate also moved into Saint-Etienne-de-Lisse and Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens in the Saint-Emilion appellation, reaching a total of 8.88 hectares. Today, after a meteoric rise from its beginnings to the rank of Premier Grand Cru Classé B in 2012, Valandraud boasts 10.70 hectares on a clay-limestone plateau. Since 2021, an all-gravity vat room that allows parcel-by-parcel vinification, complemented by an arched cellar, entirely innovative, modern and aesthetically pleasing as it blends into the natural setting, has enabled Valandraud to produce wines of great class, precise, deep and generous, wines still acclaimed by international critics and much in demand by world markets.