Le Secret des Grands Chefs (‘SGC’) was a concept launched by Arnaud Chistiaens alongside Gerard Basset and four 2- and 3-Michelin starred French chefs. The idea was to bottle strictly limited quantities of four exceptional quality wines from private vineyards in four of the most prestigious Bordeaux appellations, with the identity of the exact sites remaining a secret. From the incredible 2009 vintage, these wines are now perfect for drinking but can be cellared further.
Producer Information
The story of SGC Wines began not with a desire to make wine but simply to drink it. Christiaens, who at the time was working as a financier, traveled to Bordeaux in 2005 to start his own cellar. He called on the best advisers to guide him around the region’s most revered estates and vineyards, but what he found was an industry that had completely failed to move with the times.“Two things were very shocking to me,” Christiaens tells Elite Traveler. “The first one was hearing that there had been zero newcomers enter into the ranking of 1855 (The Bordeaux Wine Official Classification was released in 1855 as a guide to the region’s best wines and has not changed since). I thought, in an industry where you have around 12,000 labels, that nobody got access to that ranking, that it showed a high level of conservatism – a dusty industry.
