This year, Château Valandraud celebrates a remarkable milestone: 35 vintages of Saint‑Émilion’s most emblematic “garage wine” turned Premier Grand Cru Classé, crowned by the 2025 vintage – offered En Primeur and marking the start of a new chapter alongside the Lefévère family.
When Jean‑Luc Thunevin and Murielle Andraud created Château Valandraud at the end of the 1980s, it was a radical outsider in Bordeaux. They bought a tiny 0.6‑hectare plot in the Fongaban valley near Château Pavie‑Macquin and converted a simple garage into their first cellar, working the vines themselves and producing the inaugural 1991 vintage in microscopic quantities. Very quickly, Valandraud became the reference for the “garage wine” movement – a small, meticulously farmed estate that showed how ambition and attention to detail could elevate a humble terroir to world‑class status.
Over the following decades, additional plots on clay‑limestone soils around Saint‑Étienne‑de‑Lisse were added and the vineyard expanded to just over 10 hectares, while the style remained uncompromisingly focused on low yields, precise selection and careful élevage. In 2012, Château Valandraud was promoted to Saint‑Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé status – recognition that was renewed in the 2022 classification and confirmed the estate’s rise from garagiste curiosity to established grand cru.
In his recent retrospective post, Jean‑Luc Thunevin looks back on 35 vintages of Château Valandraud, all crafted under his signature. Across these years, a clear thread emerges: precision, tension, purity of fruit, controlled density and outstanding ageing potential, even in so‑called “lesser” years. The vertical tastings underline how consistently the wines express their limestone origins, which give Valandraud its energy, structure and remarkable ability to age, while meticulous vineyard work and a committed team do the rest.
The 35th vintage, 2025, is more than just another release. According to Jean‑Luc Thunevin, it stands as both an ultimate expression of everything he has built and a moment of transmission, since it is the first Valandraud crafted in partnership with the Lefévère family. Presented this year En Primeur, the 2025 continues the estate’s hallmark style of precision, purity of fruit and controlled density, shaped by its limestone terroir and meticulous work in the vines and cellar.
For collectors and Bordeaux lovers, this makes Château Valandraud 2025 a particularly symbolic En Primeur offering: a bridge between the pioneering garagiste spirit of Jean‑Luc Thunevin and the future stewardship shared with the Lefévère family. As long‑time admirers of the estate, we are proud to offer this 35th vintage as futures, giving our clients the opportunity to secure allocations while the wine is still resting in barrel and before it joins the long, age‑worthy line of Valandraud in bottle.
Sources: Château Valandraud, UGCB, Wine‑Searcher, Laguna Cellar, The Wine Cellar Insider, Jean‑Luc Thunevin / Château Valandraud Facebook post "35 vintages. One vision. One signature."
Photo: Jean‑Luc Thunevin / Château Valandraud Facebook post "35 vintages. One vision. One signature."
