Winemakers Collection 2013 Season 8 Ntisiki Biyela from Château d'Arsac - Haut-Médoc (0.75 l)

Every vintage since 2005, Philippe Raoux, owner of Château d'Arsac (Margaux), has invited a different winemaker to oversee the harvest on a plot of approximately ten hectares. This year, he has entrusted the reins to a Zulu winemaker, Ntsiki Biyela.

A land, a vineyard, a person. "The idea is to demonstrate that, of these three essential elements in winemaking, the third prevails."

Philippe Raoux smiles. Since 2005, he's invited a different winemaker to his vineyard, Château d'Arsac, every year. And he gives them carte blanche. Their mission: to choose the vineyard plots on the property, direct the harvest, oversee the vinification, blending, and aging of the wine, until finally creating his cuvée.

Selected from among internationally renowned professionals, seven winemakers produced "their" wine from the same material. They stayed at the estate seven or eight times for the duration of an adventure similar in format to an artist residency.

All the invited winemakers were given nicknames. Michel Rolland, aka "The Magician," inaugurated the series in 2005, followed by another Frenchman, Denis Dubourdieu, "The Professor." Later, the Italian "Poet" Andrea Franchetti, the Frenchmen Stéphane Derenoncourt ("The Autodidact") and Éric Boissenot ("The Médocain"), Californian Zelma Long ("The Scientist"), and Argentinean "Virtuosa" Susana Balbo, flexed their talents.

Each worked about ten hectares to produce a vintage of around 30,000 bottles. "The results are astonishing," enthuses Philippe Raoux. "It's as if we asked musicians from different backgrounds to play the same score. Today we can compare the vintages and discern in each the strong personality of these winemakers."

"This experience also increases our open-mindedness; each of the invited winemakers has specific requests for working in their own way," he continues. Some asked for the barrels to be placed outside during the day and brought inside at night. For others, it was necessary to split the entire vine, or remove the branches from the bunches to keep only the grapes attached to the main stalk...

Conceived with Jean-François Moueix and Dominique Renard, but later developed by Philippe Raoux, the concept is unique

Called "The Winemakers' Collection," the collection is commercially available with imagery borrowed from the movies. Each vintage's label features a black-and-white portrait of its producer, like a movie poster.

Retailing for between €300 and €350, the box set containing the first six volumes of the collection features a Hollywood-style pop-up setting, complete with spotlights and a folding producer's chair.

This fall, Zulu winemaker Ntsiki Biyela will arrive from South Africa to produce her eighth vintage, dubbed "Season 8" in honor of the American TV series. A box set featuring the first four female guests is already in the works. And like her predecessors, Ntsiki Biyela will have her name engraved on a bronze plaque embedded in the cellar floor: "Winemakers Boulevard."