I EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW I
I EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW I © Deepix ANGELUS EMBODIES THIS DUALITY, WHICH I THINK IS QUITE RARE, BETWEEN TRADITION AND INNOVATION. Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal President and Managing Director of Château Angelus 8 THE DAILY • WEDNESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2024 wineparis-vinexpo.com
I EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW I “Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris is the world's crossroads for great wines” Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, President and Managing Director of Château Angelus, spoke with The Daily in an exclusive interview The President of the historic domain outlined her role as custodian of Angelus' history, the domain's take on innovation, and the unique vintage the Majestueux 2022, revealed at Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris yesterday. You run an estate that has been in your family since 1782. How do you see your role today and what aspects of this heritage do you feel are essential to preserve? My role is to guarantee the continuity of the family estate - I'd say that's one of the characteristics that makes it unique - and to manage it as efficiently as possible. This means my management must be the vector of our development and our independence. In a way, I'm the custodian of an institution as well as the director of a company that's growing fast. The most precious part of my heritage I will pass on to my own children, to ensure that the estate continues as a family, and this is above all a matter of humility. I would say that the heart of this heritage is paradoxically intangible. It leads us to spontaneously embrace, with enthusiasm and gratitude, the greatness made possible by the accumulated effort from several generations, of which we are only temporarily the custodians. What innovations are you looking to introduce? I'm not particularly looking for innovation for innovation's sake, but I see it as a way of making progress on one level or another. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by a team made up of many talented people, who are curious and enthusiastic, and this leads me quite naturally to carry out all sorts of studies with practical applications in the day-to-day running of the domain. I believe that Angélus embodies this duality, which I think is quite rare, between tradition and innovation. We don't keep what we think is good about tradition out of pure sentimentality, but because it truly holds the key to a promising future. In the same way, we expect innovation to be an engine of thought and reflection as well as a source of progress. We are not looking to rush ahead and escape the present. In terms of innovation, we are fundamentally pragmatic. We analyse things meticulously with a fundamentally Cartesian approach, but without dogmatism and without any posturing. Why is Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris such an important event for the industry and specifically for Château Angelus? Why did you choose this platform to present your wine, the Majestueux 2022? Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris is the world's crossroads for great wines. It has succeeded in bringing together an entire industry that spans every continent. This makes for a fantastic showcase, as well as a global communications channel that reaches out to a very wide audience from varied backgrounds. Could you tell us more about the Majestueux 2022? What inspired your choice of name, for example? At Angelus, we've been naming each of our vintages for nearly 30 years with a qualifier that we think best embodies the wine. For the 2022 vintage, we've gone for majestic, because this grandiose wine fits perfectly with everyone's idea of majesty. It is a blend of power and natural elegance, built around perfect balance and rare intensity. We are truly guided by the ideal of perfection. Perhaps never before has it been so superbly embodied as with this extraordinary vintage. It's a wine that I think our descendants will still be able to enjoy several generations from now, provided they have the presence of mind to store it properly. You mentioned that the Majestueux 2022 comes close to the ideal of excellence that inspires and guides the estate. Could you tell us more about this ideal and the elements that have contributed to the uniqueness of Majestueux 2022? The winegrower's job is to express as accurately as possible the threefold uniqueness of a place in terms of geology, ampelography and climate. There is a history, of course, that of the people who have served this place through the ages, and a temporal context, the specific year of the vintage. Our ideal of excellence leads us to want to transcend this every year, to exalt the expression of this triple singularity and offer an emotion that will reflect our sensitivity, our history, the greatness of our terroir and the precision of each of our gestures that leads to producing this miracle that we encapsulate in a bottle year after year in the same way precious relics were searched for in the past THE MAJESTUEUX 2022 UNVEILED AT WINE PARIS & VINEXPO PARIS 2024 In a special preview, Stéphanie de Boüard- Rivoal, Angelus President and Managing Director, unveiled the bottles for the Château's Majestueux 2022 at Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris yesterday. The atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation as Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal described the vintage she believes will "make history" and marks "the end of a cycle, and a new beginning." For an exceptional vintage and beginning of a new cycle, Angelus needed an exceptional bottle, and they had one created specifically for the occasion. Just ten years after the creation of Angelus' iconic black and gold bottle, the bottle for the 2022 Majestueux is once again in the tradition of jewellery craftsmanship, with a coating obtained using a complex technical process that allows real gold (20 carats) and mother-of-pearl to literally imprint the glass. The celestial symbolism in the design of the bottle featuring a blazing sun in the heart of the night and two ellipses points to Angelus' new beginning and constant quest for perfection. The Majestueux 2022 will be available from November 2024 THE DAILY • WEDNESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2024 9
