A Collaboration: Chemin des Vins & Patrick Lesec Selections

Chemin des Vins Chemin des Vins is an American company that handles sales and marketing of the wines from Patrick Lesec Selections, a French company, to importers and distributors in the US and Canada. We offer our customers a full range of top quality wines from the finest wine producing regions of France: Alsace, Burgundy, the northern and southern Rhône, Languedoc-Roussillon, Bordeaux and the Loire. Our wines are all estate bottled, and either produced directly by Patrick Lesec Selections or very carefully selected, after painstaking research, as excellent examples of their appellation. Chemin des Vins establishes pricing for the American market as well as allocations by state and is the source of all merchandising and promotional materials. We work closely with the national wine press and are available to assist our distributors for tasting events, promotional dinners, staff tastings and training. Jim Elston, President of Chemin des Vins, has primary responsibility for organizing and working with the national distribution network. [Learn more about Jim's background and wine industry expertise.] Through this web site, we hope to provide useful information to assist our partners — importers, wholesale salesmen, restaurateurs and retailers — to market our extensive line of cutting edge wines. If you are an importer/distributor interested in doing business with Chemin des Vins/Patrick Lesec Selections, please contact us by email or by phone. * Please note that neither Chemin des Vins nor Patrick Lesec Selections sells directly to consumers. Patrick Lesec Selections Patrick Lesec has recently been recognized as one of Robert Parker's Wine Personalities of the Year (The Wine Advocate, Issue 144, Dec. 31, 2002). "A wine broker who has become heavily involved in winemaking, Lesec fashions personal cuvées of top-notch wines in addition to representing some cutting edge producers. He continues to build an impressive portfolio of high quality wines made as naturally as possible from old vines and low yields. He produces wines from Burgundy, Languedoc-Roussillon and the Rhône Valley. It is the latter area (particularly the southern Rhône) where his strengths are most obvious." Since 1993, Patrick Lesec Selections has established a well deserved reputation as a source of first class, estate-bottled wines from Burgundy, the northern and southern Rhône, Languedoc-Roussillon, the Loire and Alsace. But as a wine broker, negociant, wine consultant, master of élevage and winemaker in his own right, Patrick Lesec has a somewhat unique position in the French wine universe. First, Patrick is deeply involved in winemaking in several different regions of France. For a winemaker, and particularly a French winemaker, this is highly unusual. Patrick's broad experience gives him a wider perspective on wine and winemaking, as well as the freedom to experiment and take risks to produce superior wine. Second, Patrick's activities should be seen in the global context of the dramatic changes in viticulture and élevage (grape growing and wine making) of the last 10 years. Responding to the challenges of intense competition from winemakers in California, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the historically dominant European producers have made significant efforts to improve the quality of their products. In France, with its ancient, venerable estates and long traditions of wine making, these changes have been associated with the arrival of a new generation of winemakers (often sons of illustrious fathers) willing to invest, to take risks and to dare to make great wines. Patrick has been in the vanguard of this movement to return to organic agriculture and natural, non-interventionist winemaking. Third, Patrick owns no vineyards. Typically, a producer not owning vineyards has been seen as a negative, showing a potential lack of consistency. Patrick, conversely, believes it to be an advantage since he is less tied down to the production of any one set of vineyards which may have suffered from disastrous weather or disease in a particular vintage. Instead, he has the freedom and flexibility to shift production to other estates or even other regions where it may be possible to produce superior wines in a given year. In the Patrick Lesec Selections portfolio, there are three categories of products: Estate wines where Patrick consults on wine making and the wines are bottled under their own labels; Negociant wines where Patrick produces wines at individual estates and bottles them under his own label; Other domaines whose style and philosophy are compatible with Patrick's. These wines are marketed by Patrick Lesec Selections and Chemin des Vins under the estate labels. In the group of estates where Patrick consults on the wine making, he makes tremendous efforts to locate great terroirs with the potential to produce superior wines. He is also looking for mature vineyards and winemakers who are committed to improve the quality of their wines and willing to take risks and make changes to achieve this goal. He consults with them on limiting yields through green harvesting, canopy management, organic agricultural practices, and the timing of the harvest. With some estates, he produces a special cuvée using his techniques of élevage and his own barrels. Patrick selects the batches he wishes to purchase and specifies how he wants the assemblage to be made. In other estates, the entire production is made following his principles of élevage. In both cases, Patrick Lesec Selections markets the wines under the estate labels. The negociant wines marketed under the Patrick Lesec Label are all estate bottled. Again, Patrick is involved in all the stages of grape growing and élevage. He often has the opportunity to taste through all the batches of wine at the estate and to make his own selections, blending where possible and desirable. He works closely with the producers making adjustments and decisions consistent with his winemaking philosophy. He often provides his own barrels and instructions to bottle without filtering and fining, and, if possible, by hand. Finally, there are a number of first quality estates (Didier Dagueneaux, Dominique Laurent, Tardieu-Laurent, Gros Freres and Marc Tempe, for example) where the grape growing and winemaking philosophies are very similar to Patrick's, and where the proprietors are masters of élevage in their own right and have no need for advice or intervention. Our list of petits châteaux and cru bourgeois Bordeaux also fall into this category. Chemin des Vins/Patrick Lesec Selections is proud to have all these eminent producers in our portfolio.

Web site design: Natalie Diffloth

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