When Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal was just 32 years old, she took the helm of one of the region’s most revered estates, Château Angelus in Saint-Émilion, inheriting the role from her father, Hubert de Boüard de Laforest. Over the past two decades, she has devoted herself to preparing this storied Right Bank property for future generations, while continuing to refine its already formidable reputation.
“Aromas are blossoming in the glass,” Boüard-Rivoal, now 44, remarked recently as we tasted her 2017 vintage, known as L’Éclatant—“the bright vintage.” At Angelus, every great year is given its own evocative name, a tradition that underscores the estate’s belief that each harvest carries a distinct personality.
When we met a few years earlier in New York, she presented the 2022, Le Majestueux (“the majestic”), which would go on to be recognized as one of the great Bordeaux of the new millennium. Celebrated for its layered flavors of plum, cherry, chocolate and fresh herbs, it now commands more than $500 a bottle. Unlike many Right Bank producers, Château Angelus includes a significant proportion of Cabernet Franc in its blends, lending the wines a signature freshness, energy and tension.
“My family has owned Château Angelus for over two centuries. We live on the estate. We transmit ‘the soul’ of the wine from generation to generation,” Boüard-Rivoal explained.
That philosophy has informed a sweeping investment program, including the acquisition of almost 260 acres of new vineyard land, the construction of a new winery for the estate’s second label, Carillon d’Angelus, and the commissioning of renowned designer Olivier Chadebost to reimagine the château’s wine cellar.
Chadebost has conceived a dramatic, pendular cellar for Angelus. The project centers on a gravity-fed vinification cellar, home to 22 suspended vats. The vats hang from a ribbed vaulted ceiling and weigh an astonishing 400 tons. Curved cellar walls distribute the immense load, while light-colored concrete strata reference the stone-quarrying techniques once used by the cathedral builders of Saint-Émilion.
“It’s a gravity cellar that avoids the use of pumps, preserving the integrity of the fruit,” Boüard-Rivoal said. The gravity-flow design ensures a gentler vinification, preventing over-extraction and excessive tannin.
“The inverted V-shaped vats enable the grapes to gently press under their own weight, resulting in a softer and more gradual press,” she explained.
The new cellar will be unveiled during April’s en primeur, Bordeaux’s annual wine-futures week.
Mushrooms are another of her passions. Over the past five years, she has cultivated shiitake, lion’s mane, chestnut, maitake, and baby portobellos in a natural cave buried into a hillside on the property.
This spring, Château Angelus will appear in CNN’s Eva Longoria: Searching for France. In one memorable scene, Longoria and Boüard-Rivoal dine on a hilltop overlooking the estate as a chef prepares a dish of white fish with mushrooms from the cave. They sip Angelus red—an unlikely pairing made harmonious by the earthy depth of the mushrooms, which bridge wine and dish in a way only terroir can.
