COUTURE WINE

Chanel makes wine? You'd better believe it. The French fashion house has been quietly making some of the best bordeaux in the business for 30 years.

- Victoria Brzezinski

Chanel's pair of flagship wine estates face each other in Bordeaux, straddling each side of the silty waters of the Gironde estuary in western France, at the confluence of two great rivers—the Dordogne and Garonne—en route to the Atlantic Ocean.

The haute couture house has been discreetly producing fine wine here for three decades: first purchasing Château Rauzan-Ségla in Margaux, on the lower-lying left bank, in 1994, while on the opposing right bank, Château Canon, bought in 1996, sits on the limestone plateau of St Émilion, a gorgeous cobblestoned town named after an 8th-century Benedictine monk.

Bordeaux's hallowed top-tier wines, typically made up of two or more of the classic bordeaux grape varieties (cabernet sauvignon, plus lesser quantities of merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot) before being matured for a minimum of 18 months in French oak barriques, are entirely in keeping with Coco Chanel's modus operandi of eschewing the zeitgeist: "Fashion changes, but style endures." Indeed, as Nicolas Audebert, hired a decade ago to take the helm of Chanel's vineyard properties, says: "People buying a bottle of bordeaux are not looking for something new, different or trendy."

Audebert, an outdoorsy admiral's son from Toulon, has in the past worked for Krug, the illustrious champagne house, and an LVMH-owned Argentinian winery in Mendoza. At Chanel his aim is to produce the vinous equivalent of sophisticated haute couture while toeing the line of tradition.

“Our challenge is to make the wines better without changing the style, and the same thing applies at Chanel,” he says. “You go to a fashion show at Chanel, and it’s Chanel but it’s different every time. It’s about having one foot in the past and one foot in the future, but keeping your identity and personality while also following the world we are living in.”