2014 Esprit de Pavie, 1.5ltr

Esprit de Pavie is another innovative project from Gerard Perse, owner of the right bank estate Château Pavie. Esprit de Pavie made its debut with the 2008 vintage and is made with grapes sourced from Perse’s estates in St.-Émilion and Cotes de Castillon. Esprit de Pavie is a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, with a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine is aged in French oak barrels and about 3,500 cases are produced annually. Since it was purchased by Perse in 1998, Château Pavie, one of four St.-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé A estates, has produced one of the appellation’s most noted wines. A former professional cyclist who made his fortune with supermarket chains, Perse has modernized and updated the estate with a major replanting program. He also completely remodeled the cellars. Perse owns Château Monbousquet and Château Pavie-Decesse. A sign of Pavie’s prestige is that it was upgraded to a Premier Grand Cru Classé A in 2012 after having been a Premier Grand Cru Classé B since 1954. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written that “Pavie is one of the world’s great wines and, in St.-Émilion, exceeded only in price, not quality, by Cheval Blanc.”

Bordeaux is the world’s most famous fine-wine producing region. Even non-wine drinkers recognize the names of Bordeaux’s celebrated wines, such as Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild. Located near the Atlantic coast in southwest France, the region takes its name from the seaport city of Bordeaux, a wine trading center with an outstanding site on the Garonne River and easy access to the Atlantic. Like most French wine regions, Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, then tended by medieval monks. Aristocrats and nobility later owned the region’s best estates and today estates are owned by everyone from non-French business conglomerates to families who have been proprietors for generations. Bordeaux has nearly 280,000 acres of vineyards, 57 appellations and 10,000 wine-producing châteaux. Bordeaux is bifurcated by the Gironde Estuary into so-called “right bank” and “left bank” appellations. Bordeaux’s red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. It also makes white wines of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. There are several classification systems in Bordeaux. All are attempts to rank the estates based on the historic quality of the wines.