2000 Château Clement-Pichon

Château Clément-Pichon has a venerable history that dates to the 14th century. By the late 17th century it was owned by the Pichon family and was not only a winemaking château but was also used as a hunting grounds by Louis XIV, the Sun King. In 1976 the estate was purchased by Clément Fayat, founder of the largest publicly held construction and civil engineering firm in France. A wine lover and native of Bordeaux, Fayat also owns Châteaux Fayat and La Dominique. Today the estate has 62 acres of vineyards planted to Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. The flagship wine is Château Clement-Pichon. Michel Rolland is the consulting oenologist.

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.