Jonathan Maltus, an Englishman originally from Africa, has always been a strong believer that a bottle of wine should be judged by the taste of its contents over the ‘big name’ label slapped on the front.
His philosophy can be most easily described in two parts: do things differently, and do things better. Arriving in Saint-Émilion during the ‘garage period’ in the 1990s when breaking the rules of classic Bordeaux was all the rave, Jonathan soon gained a reputation for being able to produce a range of wines which stood out just as successfully for being unique as for being top quality. Now leading dynamic teams in both Bordeaux and Napa Valley, he’s more ambitious than ever and a driving force for change.
Best of all, he loves what he does - winemaking passion is the root of his success and the expertise of him and his team is proudly displayed in every bottle.
As the old saying goes: ‘if it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it’ - and we’re proud to be using traditional methods when they still reliably give the best results. We harvest and sort our grapes every year by hand, we ‘punch down’ the grape skins into their juices during fermentation using human muscle and we still use trusty hand-crafted oak barrels to give our wines structure and complexity. At the heart we’re artisans, and sometimes hard-earned experience can trump expensive modern alternatives.
Let’s be honest though - everyone loves to get their hands on the latest bit of tech. And we’re no different - except that for us, ‘state of the art’ is not simply showing off by filling our winery with shiny stainless steel and flashy dials - it’s a state of mind. We’re always experimenting, evolving and taking advantage of whatever technology there is available to help us control some of the more unpredictable effects of nature - ‘taming the beast’ which results in better wines.