It is almost 15 years since Peuch & Besse began offering a series of upscale wines from various French winemakers – who now number more than 100 – under the ‘One Winemaker’ label.
The concept, which features many wines exclusive to travel retail, was introduced in 2011 – the year the company made its debut at TFWA World Exhibition – alongside an innovative approach to consumer technology.
The idea of scanning a QR code to learn about a brand’s credentials may be widespread today, but back then P&B was a pioneer, linking the code to information on the wines and some beautifully shot video footage of wineries and interviews with the individual winemakers, some of which we feature below.
For shoppers at airports around the world, One Winemaker introduces customers to the expression they are looking to purchase through just one click on their smartphones.
Today, as then, it’s vital to give an authentic story to the customer, says P&B Managing Director Sylvain Combe.
On a visit in June to the winemaking region around Bordeaux with Combe and fellow director Isabelle Gec Peuch – whose family has been involved in the P&B story from its beginnings in 1904 – The Moodie Davitt Report witnessed some of these stories first-hand.
They tell of passion for local terroir and for the appellations that the winemakers represent. These are deeply personal stories of real people, families and communities; of closeness to nature while struggling against its harshness; of knowledge, care and attention to winemaking excellence passed down the generations.
They are also stories of business risk in a production cycle where few hands are involved from start to finish, and where passing wineries on to the next generation is stifled in France by bureaucracy and high cost; and a market where family growers and makers are becoming fewer amid the increasing consolidation of winery ownership.
During our visit over 24 hours in June we heard many of the human stories behind the products from some of France’s most prestigious wine regions, and how travel retail is supporting them.
On our first stop, we enjoyed a sumptuous lunch with owners Julien and Ludovic Meffre in the elegant surroundings of their Château Bellegrave Les Charmes property in Pauillac – the family also owns Comtesse Duchatel in nearby Saint-Julien.
These third-generation brothers of a winemaking family were raised to be involved from a young age, gaining an acute understanding of the production cycle and its complexity.
As with other winemakers we met, traditional processes continue to hold sway even if technology is increasingly employed to enhance and derisk maturation in particular.
Click on this and other videos below for the evocative story of each winemaker profiled in this story.
Their deep feeling for the land and the challenges nature presents them with becomes clear in a chat over a glass or two of their well-structured, elegant wines.
What becomes obvious from these family owners is how active and personally involved they are in every decision, every day – from treatment of disease to timing of vine-cutting or the use of wood and length of maturation.
Julien Meffre says: “Market conditions are changing and are quite complicated so we have to adapt. It is difficult but we are lucky to be part of the Pauillac appellation as people still seek this region out.
“Our philosophy is to produce good quality but an accessible price so it can be shared with friends and families.”
Of the Peuch & Besse partnership, Ludovic Meffre says: “They specialise in duty free and it’s a market in which you need the professionals involved. We take pride in seeing our wines around the world. We want distribution and this tailored travel retail partnership allows that to happen in this channel, complemented by negociants and other distributors in domestic markets.”
He adds: “What the business looks like in ten years is hard to say. We have the quality but want to improve our promotion and communication. How the wines are sold is also changing, meaning even closer partnerships with the merchants. When people can meet us and try our wines they buy and love them.”
Later we travel to meet Jean-François Delon, Owner of Château Ségur de Cabanac Saint-Estèphe, whose family has also worked this estate in the Médoc region (on the left bank of the Gironde) for generations.
After a difficult 2024 harvest, like his peers Delon is hoping for an improvement in 2025. “There are very hot temperatures through summer and every couple of weeks a storm so you can be unlucky. You cannot do anything but hope and pray,” he says with a wry smile.
The geography of his estate offers an intriguing insight that only a visit to this region can make clear. Delon takes us out to his vineyards, one parcel of which borders the famed (and prestige-priced) Calon Ségur Grand Cru Classé.
Though his wine is not classified (or priced) in the same way as his prestigious neighbour, it benefits from the very same terroir and methods. This is a story replicated in countless properties across this region, and often a blind tasting or a label won’t tell the difference between a Grand Cru Classé and wine made from adjoining parcels using the techniques.
The vagaries of brand perception are just one challenge facing Delon and others in the market. Selling stock after a tough year such as 2024 is no easy task, yet winemakers have to fund the next year’s harvest from somewhere.
For some observers, Bordeaux was simply sold at too high a price pre-pandemic, meaning that price perception in today’s tough market is a challenge – and cash flow is a perennial market challenge for family winemakers.
The macroeconomic picture – from Brexit to US tariffs to weak consumer spending at home and abroad – does not help. Wine trends that see more younger generations drinking white wine are also an issue for these predominantly red winemakers. And that is before you factor in the competition from other winemaking regions of the world where quality and supply has markedly improved, intensifying competition for France’s great wine regions.
Some farmers have considered switching from viniculture to other agricultural crops, yet as maker after maker told us, once you do this it is unlikely you will make wine from those same fields again.
Yet all of those challenges fade away in those good years that still make the business viable, and it is that hope that these passionate makers cling to. In broadening the reach of Château Ségur de Cabanac, travel retail remains a vital channel, says Delon.
“It is a great shop window. Duty free supports us. What we cannot do is send our quality product into other channels at discounts that kill the brand. We sell through Peuch & Besse at a reasonable price that allows us to reach a curious audience.”
Our next stop takes us to another storied appellation, Margaux, and Château Le Coteau Cuvée Graveline owned by Christel and Eric Leglise.
Like many family owners, they farm 13-14 hectares (modest compared to the large operations) with plots in three parcels, each sitting between better-known classified growth vineyards but made from the same terroir and using similar methods.
Indeed, this house is one of the last family-owned properties in Margaux. When Eric Leglise took over from his father there were 15 family-owned properties in the village; today there are only three.
Leglise’s grandmother initially used the land for various types of farming though now it is fully allocated to winegrowing. How the timing of harvesting, use of wood and blending is created all helps to lend personality to the wine, and adds subtle points of difference within each appellation.
We talk long in the atmospheric Château Le Coteau cellars about the weather and its impacts, underlining to this visitor that nature’s moods are not casual events but are existential episodes for these farmers. Here too they rely on making the best of the knowledge passed down the generations to make these exceptional and elegant wines.
As the evening shadows draw in, we make our way to the right bank commune of Fronsac, famed for its Merlot-based vintages.
Jean-Yves Millaire, who we meet with his wife Christine, has over time acquired a series of land parcels that he works with family. Over a memorable evening meal of duck barbecued in his garden accompanied by his two major wines – Château Cavale Cuvée Saint-Michel Bordeaux and Château Canon Saint-Michel l’Authentique Canon-Fronsac – we talk about both the science and the art of winemaking.
Millaire is constantly testing and trialling grape styles, techniques and wood, but perhaps most significantly he took the decision in 2006 – ahead of many of his peers – to adopt a fully organic approach to winemaking. This, he says, was about respecting the terroir while leaving the land in the best possible condition for future generations.
“This is about going to back to ancient practices but which make common sense,” he says, taking great pride in making wines that are “healthy and made in the most artisanal way possible”.
Before departing this region the following day, we have two more stops to make, this time in Saint-Émilion. The first visit, fittingly, is to the home of P&B’s Isabelle Gec Peuch and the vineyard worked by her grandparents and parents before her, Château Gravet-Renaissance Saint-Emilion Grand Cru.
Gec Peuch’s own story is tied up with that of the family business. From 1991 she worked in the P&B Paris office but her dream was to manage the wine property at home, which she began doing 25 years ago. As then, all of the chateau’s wine is sold through P&B.
“We control everything in the process, which is key,” she says as we look out at the land surrounding the vineyard in Saint-Sulpice. “What is key is to preserve the quality of the wine; if it’s not there, you cannot simply sell it or you risk damaging your brand.”
Gravet-Renaissance occupies an immediate seven hectares with another three close in Saint-Émilion, one of which is adjacent to the famed Château Angélus.
Like the other winemakers we met, new methods of production have come along and influenced the accessibility of the wine. Where many makers would ask customers to wait ten years before drinking, today consumers want to open it now.
“It’s a new world for us. Wines are made to be accessible through new techniques. One thing we don’t yet know is whether they will hold their quality for 25-30 more years.
“Tradition still counts though. All of us retain our own winemaking identity and respect the style of our appellations, even as the science of wood and the art of blending evolve.”
Our final visit, also in Saint-Émilion, takes us to the home of Hélène Rollet, owner of Château du Vieux Guinot La Petite Chapelle Saint-Emilion Grand Cru and Château Fourney Le Clos Saint-Emilion Grand Cru (the latter part of the P&B Wines of Golf Legends portfolio, in this case a partnership with French golfer Jean van de Velde). Here we also meet Geoffroy Billot, CEO of Rollet’s business.
Remarkably, Rollet is the 13th generation of winemakers working the family’s land – and that heritage likely goes back even further as this represents only the documented history.
Over a sumptuous homemade lunch of pork confit in the winemaker’s kitchen, we talk wine structure, barrel toasting and the challenges facing Bordeaux makers amid a poor harvest in 2024 and their contrasting hopes for better in 2025.
Of travel retail, Billot says: “We rely a lot on P&B to access new markets and are often surprised and impressed at their capacity to succeed in bringing us new areas for export. We take pride in being part of the duty-free market.”
Summing up the business of representing these winemakers in travel retail, Sylvain Combe says: “We receive consistent supply at consistent pricing from producers across all of the main appellations, which in turn adds credibility to what we do. Our retail partners respect this.
“We also take a family approach. We don’t buy more than 30% of the harvest from any supplier, or we face the risk (for them and us) of over-committing financially, as we buy the wines then sell them on. We have to be responsible.
“We also have to buy at fair prices. In a distressed market we could buy at -20% lower but if we do that we’ll kill the brand and the market. Over time what this means is the maker uses a different type of machine, a less expensive cork and bottle, and the wine quality suffers. His reputation falls, he does it at even lower cost and the spiral continues. We cannot let that happen.”
The key is balance, between maintaining the winemakers’ high-quality level, accessible pricing to the consumer – many of the expressions we tasted are priced €40-50 per bottle in travel retail – and a business where P&B and the retailer can retain a solid margin.
Combe says: “As an industry we need to act with speed, agility and satisfy local demand in particular markets where it exists, while managing the complex logistics of travel retail. Above all, we can use the opportunity technology has given us to talk to people around the world live and instantly.
“We were first to create a QR code on the wine bottle that accesses video; now it is everywhere. This is part of the communication today. We have to connect consumers with the reality of the wineries and show them the winemakers’ stories. If we can communicate their passion and expertise, wine can succeed at the heart of the travel retail offer.” ✈
