Bordeaux’s prestigious Lurton family is working together to “find synergies” and promote their wines as part of the 13-strong family collective.

Since 2009, 13 family members have worked together to promote their wines under the Lurton du vin umbrella - first via a website, then a New York tasting and now a London event.

Marie-Laure Lurton, one of the founding members who owns the Château la Tour de Bessan and Villegeorge properties, told Harpers at yesterday’s event that a major advantage of working together was gaining access to new markets, as each member “opened their address book” to the others.

According to Marie-Laure the 2012 vintage was quite difficult in Bordeaux, offering good quality but poor yields.

She is currently selling around 40-50% of her wines in China, but would prefer to have more of a spread in other markets. She said the UK market was “difficult”. Her Villegeorge label was popular in London restaurants 20 years ago, but is not currently. “It’s a very competitive market,” she said, especially given there are 300 Cru Bourgeois Properties, many in the Haut-Médoc, which makes it difficult to stand out. “I’m working on making our name more well known, but it takes a long time.”

As for how the 2012 vintage is shaping up, Marie-Laure warned that so far people hadn’t seemed “so interested” in the vintage, but was hopeful this might change at April’s en primeur tastings.

Jacques Lurton, who owns South Australia’s Kangaroo Estate as well as Bordeaux’s La Martinette, said the family group would help business, but in a way “you can’t quantify”. “The main advantage of this group is that it shows we’re unique in the world. No other family has 13 family members in individual businesses.”

“It’s about promoting the name, people see Lurton and believe in the name first - then they might like the individual behind it.”

He said that while a lot of the family travel with many different winemaking groups, such as the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, and many were very well known, such as Brane-Cantenac, the idea for them was to “work together and find synergies”. “Today things are working very well for them, but times could change, why not help the others? That’s what family is.”
Jacques added that while some of the family members may have plenty of money to allocate for marketing, others did not. “We adjust our budget to suit everyone.”

François Lurton, who runs vineyards in four different countries, said it was interesting to promote the family name, alongside the “diversity” of each individual member. He could not pinpoint any particular advantages of being in the group, other than, “I like to be there and to be with my family”.