Would You Pay US$33,000 For This Bottle Of Wine?

Liber Pater is made in tiny batches from extremely rare grape varieties, using techniques popular in the time of Napoleon. But not everyone is impressed.

- Jeff Jenssen and Mike DeSimone

In a steady winter drizzle 30 minutes outside Bordeaux, the tiny hamlet of Pichou appears abandoned save for a rugged-looking fellow in overalls and wellies, with the long, flowing hair of a romance-novel cover model, ploughing a field of twigs behind a strapping white horse. Vineyards generally don’t look like much in late winter, but the barrenness here is extreme. Where are the trellises, the wires, the thick vine stumps? Can this muddy field really belong to the controversial vintner who makes the world’s most expensive wine?

Loïc Pasquet pulls up in a dirt-splattered grey utility van and jumps out to greet us. He points to the sodden ground covered with sticks, stones, grass, and clumps of weeds and tells us about the grape varieties grown here and about how the rows are planted in such a way that they can be ploughed in three different directions, like a tic-tac-toe board. For someone who socialises with royalty and makes a wine that sells for roughly US$33,000 a bottle, the 48-year-old Pasquet is unassuming in person. His hiking boots, Levi's, fisherman’s sweater, and rain-dotted glasses make him appear more like a working farmer than an innovative winemaker. Or, for that matter, the self-promotional publicity hound that some in the industry consider him to be.

We first met Pasquet at the Golden Vines Awards, dubbed the Oscars of Fine Wine, in Paris in October 2023. His Liber Pater 2007 had been poured for the assembled guests in the ornate gallery of Paris’s Opéra Garnier to accompany the cuisine of star chefs Alain Ducasse and Akrame Benallal.