Earlier this month, as this year’s Bordeaux en primeur campaign for the 2023 vintage petered out, 11 of us wine writers sat in a handsome manor house in the Flemish village of Etikhove tasting our way back to the vintage exactly a century older, 1923, of one of the most famous Pomerols. We were celebrating the centenary of the acquisition of Vieux Château Certan by the Thienpont family, Belgian wine merchants.
VCC remains the domain of Jacques’ cousin Alexandre, who made the wine between 1986 and 2011, succeeded by his well-travelled winemaker son Guillaume. Jacques and his wife Fiona Morrison, a Master of Wine, meanwhile commute between Pomerol and Etikhove, running both Le Pin and the family’s Belgian wine business. It was their idea to celebrate the centenary.