Le Pin: The Early Years
What Jacques Thienpont acquired was a single hectare of vines, accompanied by the aforementioned tumbledown house. The reason for those concrete steps leading up to the balcony was simple; that was the level on which the living quarters sat, below which was the cellar, partly but not entirely subterranean. The facilities were rudimentary to say the least, including an earthen floor, unthinkable in Bordeaux today. The vineyard was in good condition though, and so Jacques at least had some good quality raw material to start with. The domaine was named Le Pin, in honour of the pine tree that stood outside, and Jacques set about making his first vintage, in 1979.
Looking back at these early vintages many decades later it is perhaps tempting to think that they must have been an immediate success, but it was not the case. Working with a new vineyard, which included a parcel of very young vines, in cramped conditions, the volumes produced were very small. In particular, limited space and lack of equipment meant that Jacques ran his wine direct from the fermentation tank into barrel, rather than into a second tank was would have been the norm. For this reason the wines underwent malolactic fermentation in barrel, rather than in vat. At this time the mysteries of the malolactic fermentation, a bacterial process, had only been unravelled two decades or so before, and it was usual to leave the wine in tank through winter until it came back to life in spring, when the warming temperatures in the cellars kickstarted the bacteria into action. Only once the malolactic fermentation had completed was the wine run off into barrel.
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