Quentin Debayle joined the Château Larcis Ducasse team in January 2022 as Assistant Technical Manager.
What is your background? How did you come to work in the vineyards?
I come from a family from the South-West and especially from Bordeaux, so I spent my entire childhood in the region. I have been immersed in wine and vineyards since I was a teenager, thanks to my father who is a fine taster and to the family vineyard where I used to go and do the leaf removal to earn some pocket money.
After the baccalaureate, I went to the engineering school of Purpan where I already had the will to work in the wine industry. My first internship experiences in the Bordeaux region confirmed my passion for vines and wine. Once my diploma was validated, I left for a year to make wine abroad (Napa and South Africa) in order to discover other wine regions and a different know-how. Then I settled down for almost 3 years in Gigondas in the Southern Rhone Valley where I was able to discover the winemaker’s job in more detail, both in the vineyard and in the cellar.
What do you like most about your job?
What I find most exciting is to be able to work with living things. Being a winemaker is a job that requires versatility and a great capacity to adapt, because we are dependent on our environment, our terroir and the climatic hazards that go with it. Each year is different, some practices evolve. We find ourselves in a constant learning process because nothing is set in stone. This is what makes this job very exciting.
“When I hear Larcis Ducasse, I immediately think of this magnificent hillside with its terraces which are not common in the Bordeaux region.”
How do you see your job evolving over the years ?
For a few years now, we have seen a backward shift in extractions and the use of wood in the maturing of wines, especially in Bordeaux. Today, wines that are too body-built are abandoned by consumers. We are coming back to balanced and terroir wines. To obtain this, we pay more attention to the vineyard and we adjust the work in the cellar according to the vintage. This evolution will continue and surely accelerate with climate change. The 2022 vintage is a good example: the objective will be to preserve freshness and drinkability in the wines despite a hot summer.
What does Larcis Ducasse mean to you?
When I hear Larcis Ducasse, I immediately think of this magnificent hillside with its terraces which are not common in the Bordeaux region. This particularity translates a certain uniqueness of this so complex terroir. You can feel it in the wines which are like no other, and also in the way of working in the vineyard which requires a lot of requirement and a very precise know-how. It is all this that makes Larcis Ducasse such a special and exciting place.
“What I find most interesting is to be able to work with living things”.
