I first encountered The Vintage Punks about a year ago when browsing around for interesting blogs to follow. With great language and content, taste references to music and wine nerdery about vintage Bordeauxs and fun tasting notes, they piqued my interest and I have been following their writings closely ever since. Bloggers Sammy and Phil have been friends since they met in sommelier school in Montreal, Canada.
Phil Stanton St-Germain now lives in Bordeaux where he is currently working at the prestigious vineyard Chateau de Chantegrive in the classic sub-region of Graves.
A couple of weeks ago, Phil was on a sales mission to Stockholm and I got the chance to meet him.
Are there any common myths about working in a winery you can bust for us?
Yeah – We’re not drunk all day long… everyday!
Is there anything nasty we as laymen don’t know about winemaking?
If there is no rigorous sorting of the grapes, you get lizards, spiders and snails wine! Our harvest is clean, but I’ve seen less scrupulous producers. It is usually mass-produced cheap wine, sold in bulk, so that bottle of Bordeaux at 50 kronor is probably not a good bet!
With that in mind, we set off towards a properly finer establishment in the city centre for a chat and a few slightly more pricy glasses and I strike up our conversation again with asking Phil about his reasons for being in Stockholm.
I’m here to meet potential importers, but it turned out to be a waste of time… The people I met were from Poland and wanted to do business there, but we already have someone taking care of our wines in Warsaw. It was supposed to be an in-and-out kind of thing, but I decided to turn it into a weekend and see the city.
I love Stockholm! The city is splendid. The people I meet here are friendly and not judging and let me say that you have amazingly beautiful women! I’m maybe coming back in October as I have friends from Hong Kong doing a tour of northern Europe and Scandinavia… And one place that I’m going to hit again is the 19 Glas where I had en epic meal with a superb Morgon from Marcel Lapierre.
Phil is not only a wine lover, he’s also going for the good food and travels to any place he can get a reservation for a Michelin-starred table – something that was hard to get in Summertime Stockholm since most places was booked out or even closed. I asked him about his best-ever meal.
My favourite food and wine paring will always be a bold, vibrant Bordeaux blend with a barely cooked steak, but I enjoy trying new things and finding new flavors and aromas. My best meal ever… that’s a tough one… I hesitate to choose between NOMA in Copenhagen and Reinstoff in Berlin. I guess I’d have to go with the Reinstoff because it was perfect from the first course to the last and the wines were perfectly matched. Whereas at NOMA, there were times when the pairings seemed a little bit off.
Before moving into the wine business Phil spent many years in restaurants, and he has seen both the good and the bad side of restaurateurs.
I’d rather not name anyone, but I worked for eight years in one of the oldest French restaurants in Montreal and after that I worked for a group that has a Relais & Château restaurant. I would probably not go back to the food and beverage industry, but I think it should be mandatory for everybody to work at least six months as a waiter. It would teach people to behave and not act like total jerks with the waiting staff.
He studied to become a sommelier, but after a hard time working under a difficult boss he was ready to quit the business altogether.
That’s when a friend of my parents, who is a wine journalist in Quebec, asked me if I wanted to go work in France for the harvest, for a few months. I liked it so much and wanted to stay, so I made myself invaluable to my boss and they decided to give me a full-time position. It’s been two years now.
How did a Canadian punk rocker like you end up working in the restaurant business in the first place?
I studied sound recording, history and literature, so I could have ended up working in a music studio or maybe as an academic, but I didn’t finish any of the classes so I guess it was not for me. Also, I kind of discovered partying at the same time, so school was not a priority… getting shit-faced and going out was!
For the last two years Phil has been working at one of Bordeaux’s oldest Chateaus making wine. He wakes up early every day to go for a sanity-stabilising morning run. Before meeting up with the head winemaker around 8am to get the daily tasks, he checks on e-mails and updates the wine blog.
There is no routine, sometimes we have to put the labels on the bottles, sometimes we have to take samples from the barrels to check the levels of SO2 or it can be transferring wine from one tank to another. At 5pm, I meet with the owner to see where we are on current projects and sales and to organize shipments and to plan tours of the estate and since I’m the only one that can speak English, I take care of the tourists. I finish my day at around 7-7:30”.
Of all the daily challenges, which is toughest?
I would say it’s to sell the wine. The grapes basically just grow themselves, we need to be careful about diseases, of course, but other than working the soil and de-leaving, we just let the vines be. The work is time-consuming but not difficult. The vinification process is harder because there is no written recipe. The way we treat the grapes changes with each vintage. No, the real challenge is selling the wine! There is a lot of competition and the Graves appellation, while being the oldest of Bordeaux, is not the most prestigious.
The hard work is more than made up for by some of the great tasting experiences Phil has had at the vineyard.
Right now I really love our 2008 vintage. It’s structured and powerful and the Cabernet that we picked was super-ripe so we have nice aromas of spices and dark fruit. I say right now because wine, when it is young, tends to have different “phases”. For example, three months ago the same 2008 were very closed and hard to taste, now it’s sublime.
And is there anything outside your own winery you like to drink?
There is one wine that I could kill for, produced by the brother-in-law of the vineyard manager, who is the technical director at Cheval Blanc. It’s called l’Arpent and it’s a generic Bordeaux wine. What makes it special is the fact that it’s not produced to be sold to other people than friends and family because there’s only four barrels a year made. It’s also one of the best Bordeaux that I’ve ever tasted and I’m including some classified growth in here.
Is there any other stand-out wines or tastings you would like to share with us?
“I think that there is two tastings that I’ll remember all my life. The first one was in Montreal, in a splendid old mansion where I tasted Château Margaux, Château Palmer, Château Cos D’Estournel and Château Léoville Las Cases in 1990 and 1995. The second one was when I toured and drank Cheval Blanc and Yquem with Pierre Lurton”.
With your punk rock roots, can you compare music with wine making somehow?
“Both music and wine can convey emotions and, in both cases, if you don’t make me feel something your product is no good for me. A good example would be Château Sociando-Mallet. It’s a perfect wine in the technical sense but, for me, it has no soul.
I believe that there are good wines in every appellation, from all over the world. I think the same is true for music – I’ll listen to almost anything, but I have a preference for hardcore punk from the 80s. Hardcore is like my every day Bordeaux, but I do have guilty pleasures! Sometimes I’ll really enjoy a caricatural, almost sweet, Syrahs from the USA like I sometimes enjoy Phil Collins. But, these days, what’s usually playing in my earphones is Sweden’s own Watain, thanks to you. I also listen to the latest Black Dahlia Murder and “This Is Boston Not L.A.”, a mythical compilation album from the east coast hardcore punk scene”.
What does the Vintage Punk blog hold in the future for you and how do you want to see your writing in coming years?
Yeah, right now I’m just having fun. I’d like to continue, maybe more seriously, but when I settle down somewhere. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but one thing I know for sure is that writing is a process that I love and that calms me. It’s very “Zen”.
Will we be able to get your wines from Chateu de Chantegrive in Sweden anytime soon?
Well, if an importer reads this and wants to import our wines, give him my email!
Words and Photo by Pär Strömberg
