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In conversation with Denise Adams, owner of Château Fontplégade
Welcome to The Wine Conversation, a podcast created for people who love wines and hosted by Sarah Kemp, the Publisher and Managing Director of Decanter, famous worldwide media, for over a quarter of a century. In this podcast, Sarah or her co-conversationalists will talk about stories with great names behind labels, discuss regions and vintages with world expert and will bring you around the world to find the best spots to enjoy a glass of wine.
Demonstrating the endless variety of life in the wine world, Elin McCoy talks to Denise Adams about her transition from art teacher and interior designer to biodynamic vigneron in Saint Emilion and Napa Valley. Denise tells Elin how she grew up in Ohio with a family that drank wine, but none that were memorable. During her college years, she had the opportunity to taste Château Haut Brion and Château d’Yquem, both of which opened her eyes to the wonders of wine; she became a firm Francophile and started collecting Bordeaux, a passion she shared with her husband. (She was married in Bordeaux and spent her honeymoon in Saint Emilion.) Stephen Adams was an entrepreneur and a businessman, and they followed through on their passion by buying châteaux – the one which became their special favourite was Château Fonplégade, a Saint Emilion Grand Cru Classé. She tells the story of how they bought it from the Moueix family (a different branch from the Christian Moueix family). The estate was rundown, and they decided to renovate, removing a third of the vines, which were on the wrong rootstock. Denise decided that the time, money and energy needed to bring it back to its glory meant selling the other châteaux, and today they only own Château Fontplégade and L’Enclos in Pomerol in France.