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You know you’re in for a good chat when the first thing your interviewee says is, “You have your questions, and I have my answers, but there might not be a link between them!” A throaty laugh and a smile follows.
Frenchman Loïc Pasquet, is owner and vigneron of Liber Pater, the world’s most expensive wine. Accompanied by two friends (and clients), he meets me in the lounge of a luxury hotel in Singapore, not in a tailored suit — the uniform of Bordeaux’s noted winemakers when meeting their flock — but in an old pair of blue jeans and a comfy sweater.
“We make luxury wine,” he says to me, matter-of-factly. “The rarest and most expensive in the world”. The wine, by the way, is named for the god of wine and male fertility. Each bottle, sold on a strict allocation basis, goes for an eye-watering 30,000 euros (S$42,225).
Why not 20,000 euros or 40,000 euros for a Liber Pater?
“Loïc is a socialist!” Ravi Viswanathan, Pasquet’s designated translator — not that he needs one — offers an insight. A Singapore-based investor and a vintner himself, Viswanathan has heard the story told before. “Prior to the release of his first vintage of 100 per cent ungrafted vines, he asked his clients: ‘What would you pay for a bottle that is 100 per cent ungrafted?’ The average turned out to be 31,000 euros. But because he is a socialist, he decided to lower the price!”
Pasquet, I learn, is a man of conviction and confidence.
An advocate for ungrafted vines
Credit: Liber Pater
An advocate of francs de pied (the French term for ungrafted vines), Pasquet’s wines have exclusively been made from freestanding rootstock since his 2015 vintage. Ungrafted plantings are a rarity in post-phylloxera Europe, where the vast majority of vines used in wine production are grafted onto aphid-resistant American rootstock. Though his early vintages were made with some grafted vines, Pasquet wants nothing of it now.
Grafting alters the chemistry of the grapes, modifies its vegetative cycle and changes the taste of its wine, he tells me. “Post-phylloxera Bordeaux makes wine like varietal soup. I want to make fine wine.”
His vineyard in Landiras, Graves, is farmed organically and Pasquet works it with a mule. The animal is both gentler on the land and small enough to move between vines, which are planted at a density of 20,000 vines-per-hectare — at least double the density of other top Bordeaux producers.
Credit: Liber Pater
For the assemblage, cabernet sauvignon — he refers to it by its old name petite vidure — is the star along with petit verdot and malbec. Small amounts of castets, tarney and saint-macaire also go into the blend. Once common to the region, these rare native varieties are now outlawed by the strict French appellation system.
When harvested, the grapes are crushed, then placed directly into amphoras — a practice which originated 6,000 years ago in Georgia — where they spend 30 months before bottling. “Why 100 percent amphora? Because I want the purity and precision of the terroir to come through,” Pasquet explains.
While he has used barrels for his grafted wines in the past, since 2018, not a drop of his wines have made contact with oak, which adds flavour compounds like vanilla and smoke.
He releases vintages only when the wine meets his standards. There isn’t one for 2021 because of frost, and with wildfires raging through the Gironde region this summer, smoke-taint may well leave some Bordeaux winemakers, including Pasquet, without a 2022 harvest. [Note: In the weeks following this interview, Pasquet and his family were forced to evacuate their property for a few days because of encroaching fires. But with the crisis settling, he looks forward to another Singapore visit later in the year.]
A unicorn wine
Credit: Liber Pater
“When you drink a bottle of Liber Pater, it’s a unique experience. The taste is something you’ve never had before. You are tasting a wine that’s closer to what Napoleon III would have drunk before phylloxera. You’re drinking wine history,” he says, eyes glinting despite jet lag.
“Few people will ever taste Liber Pater since we produce just 400 bottles a year, and of that I save 200 for my next generation,” says the father of two young girls.
Thanks to Pasquet’s other friend — also named Ravi — a private banker who has purchased a few bottles to open with fellow enthusiasts, I am poured thousands of dollars worth of the 2015 and a glass of the humbler 5,000-euro 2007.
Experts consider the 2007 vintage a middling year for Bordeaux, but Pasquet has done very well. Some grafted vines are used, as is some oak, and on the whole, this wine is generous yet evolved, reminding me why I’ve a soft spot for an appropriately aged fine Bordeaux.
The 2015 is, as Pasquet describes, an experience. It is a beautiful wine. It is pure in expression, but I dare say with elements of familiarity. Maybe it’s because there are organic, minimal intervention wines coming out of Bordeaux. Perhaps because amphora-aged wine is experiencing a renaissance across the globe. In any case, what makes the wine unique is its rare ungrafted Bordeaux varietals — something I’ve never tasted before. Is the 2015 Liber Pater any good? Yes, very much so. Is there another 30,000-euro wine in my memory vault to compare its quality with? Unfortunately, no.
“It’s a piece of art,” says Pasquet. “I’m sure that in 10 years, one bottle of Liber Pater will cost about 100,000 euros.”
While it’s tempting to write it off as hubris, there is a real chance of francs de pied prices soaring in the next decade. Pasquet is the driving force of a group of European vignerons seeking Unesco heritage status for ungrafted vines grown in their native terroirs. Other members of the Francs de Pied association include Egon Müller (Mosel), Cupano (Montalcino), and the Askaneli Brothers (Georgia).
A tale of his-story
Credit: Liber Pater
Before I leave, I’m given a hardcover graphic novel Pasquet commissioned to tell the story of his wine journey. It begins at his birth in 1976 in Poitiers, a provincial city between Bordeaux and Paris.
Pasquet, from the book, is enamoured by wine from a young age. “When I was 11, I precociously and passionately threw myself into collecting wine, mostly from Burgundy, The Rhone, The Loire, some Bordeaux…”
Age 28, he purchases his property in Landiras and sets about planting high- density ungrafted vines, including rare native varietals procured from the IFV (French Institute For Vines and Wines) that had gone out of favour when industrial practices were adopted for agriculture. “These plants would be considered as illicit merchandise according to appellation law,” the IFV director is pictured warning Pasquet.
There have been run-ins with authorities over the years, and the book traces many of these events from his perspective. They range from being taken to task for planting more densely than allowed to letting too much grass grow between his vines, and “aggravated deception”, of which he is later acquitted.
Credit: Liber Pater
The trade-off ? The wines must be labelled Vin de France — the most basic quality tier — rather than bear the name of its appellation. But Pasquet sees it as a badge of honour. “When you are labelled Vin de France, you are totally free to create. You are like Van Gogh and can do as you feel. You work like an artist. When you are in AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), you have to produce wine like an industry, like Coca-Cola.”
I get the sense Pasquet revels in the irony that his Liber Pater is truer to the wines of Napoleon III — who requested that Bordeaux’s 1855 classification of wines be drawn up — than even today’s classified first growths.
“Wine is part of our culture. It’s important to work for our culture and our heritage,” he tells me.
Due to his wine’s rarity, he is also profiting handsomely.
