Clos Badon is a historic estate created before 1900 in the Saint-Émilion district, bought in 1998 by Thunevin and operated by the same teams that make Valandraud.
It comprises 6.5 hectares of vines averaging 30 years old (with the oldest planted in 1954) on flint-gravel soils.
Thunevin is considered to be the best example of a “garage wine” producer and was the subject of a lot of controversy over his first vintages, due to receiving high marks from Robert Parker for his first wine, Château Valandraud, especially because it lacked any of the “tradition” found among great Bordeaux wines. Later on, he again took everybody by surprise with his “L'Interdit” wines that were labelled as non-vintage table wines, because he had covered over part of his vineyards to protect them from suffering the effects of bad weather, an act not allowed under appellation regulations.
Nowadays, wines made by Jean-Luc Thunevin and Murielle Andraud have cult status almost, with low production numbers, and based not only on the notion of terroir, typified by Bordeaux's Great Wines, but also on care of the grape. Murielle, in particular, and her team care for the vineyards as though they were gardens, and harvest the grapes as late as possible in order to obtain better concentration.
Some think this is a wine made to suit the American taste. Others simply believe it is a modern, concentrated, very mature, flavoursome and seductive wine.
