Mouton Cadet needs no introduction: for 90 years, the brand has strived to offer a range of quality Bordeaux wines at reasonable prices. We may not really know it, but Mouton Cadet is very committed to its winegrowers and to the wine sector. This is the opportunity to present their vision to you a little more thanks to the interview with Jérôme Aguirre, Director of Mouton Cadet Wines.
VertdeVin: What is Mouton Cadet’s CSR policy?
Jérôme Aguirre: At Mouton Cadet, we support our winegrowers, this is part of our commitment. We have a 3-year contract with our winegrowers and if requested, a support to organic farming conversion. There is a real support from our technical teams who generally visit all our winegrowers twice a week. The idea is really to have improvement and progression over the years. It is a link that we want to maintain with our winegrowers. The technical side is important of course with the continuous improvement at the level of the vineyard, the know-how, the quality of the harvest and the winemaking processes. Our Mouton Cadet winegrowers make the wine and even start ageing it, it is the following year that the wines are recovered, and few people know that.
Mouton Cadet has existed for 90 years and has always been very committed to this notion of development in the Bordeaux vineyards. Bordeaux is a patchwork of wine landscapes, and we, at Mouton Cadet, like the profile of winegrowers from small family properties and for some of them, we have been working with for 2 or 3 generations! We specially value these family properties who are committed, who live daily in their vineyards, who work self-sufficiently, who have values. It is our choice to work with them and support them with our technical teams.
Without good grapes, you cannot make good wine. Wine culture is in our DNA: it is the story of Baron Philippe de Rothschild. This is why we have also put in place a charter with our winegrowers which covers our social (particularly remuneration) and environmental commitments. We want to highlight our commitments because we think that Bordeaux needs to further capitalize on its environmental management.
VdV: How do you select winegrowers?
J.A.: Generally, we do an audit visit to the facilities with the winegrowers. But above all we get to know each other, we discover their personalities to see if they could work with us. The human aspect is a very important point: it is an intangible value, but it is the most important in preserving the know-how of winemaking. We attach a lot of importance to it. We want to defend viticulture on a human scale with winegrowers who are in the vineyard during the morning, in the cellar in the afternoon and who do the accounting in the evening!
We are currently experiencing a moment of transition in Bordeaux. It is up to us to show direction with our winegrowers. We want to unite. Moreover, we organize events such as a day of common size, inter-winegrower meetings, exchanges between those who are in conventional and organic viticulture…
Mouton Cadet is not trying to make Grand Cru Classé. It’s not the same product. The wonderful artist Dubuffet showed that the ordinary could be the extraordinary. Today, we try to look at Bordeaux with a different eye and therefore we are looking, with our technical teams, for territories with magnificent living soils, winegrowers who work their land without knowing themselves that they are on a treasure. We want a signature from Bordeaux which will allow young people to get into wine and recruit other young people. We want to show an elegant, easy, unpretentious Bordeaux within everyone’s reach.
VdV: How many winegrowers do you work with?
J.A.: We work with around 200 winegrowers and 30% of the parcels are organic. 70% of them have been working with Mouton Cadet for over 9 years. We have a few vines in our own name, but our DNA is this community of winegrowers, and we work every day with them to consolidate our relationship. This represents between 8 to 10 million of bottles.
VdV: What are the Mouton Cadet Collections?
J.A.: Mouton Cadet is particularly renowned for the art of blending, in order to offer the very best of the Bordeaux terroir. But we also offer a 100% Merlot or a 100% Sauvignon Blanc. We don’t forbid ourselves anything. You need a bit of creativity in the
products you want to offer, and you must be daring! We have developed an organic collection in red, white, and rosé and we distribute our wines in 130 countries. We like to challenge ourselves and present a modern interpretation of a Bordeaux wine, with a fresh style. Europe is our main market, but we are also very present in the United States and Asia. We then have our core collection Mouton Cadet red, white and rosé and a more premium line with Mouton Cadet Cuvée Héritage. We want to offer round, fruity wines with brightness and freshness.
New cuvées will see the day: there are things to highlight, terroirs to be bottled differently. We have many projects, but we want to work with all humility as close as possible to our winegrowers to support them in a complicated period. We have a lot of field work to do, especially in Bordeaux, for restaurateurs to highlight the region’s wines.
We also work on packaging such as the type and weight of bottles, recycling… This is a part of our daily job for our CSR policy.
Chloé Cazaux Grandpierre
Mouton Cadet
www.moutoncadet.com
