Saint-Émilion

Situated a few kilometres east of Libourne, Saint-Émilion is a town listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is as renowned for its old stones and its sites as for the excellence of its wines. It is Saint-Émilion that, since very ancient times, has given its name to the wines produced in this region.

It is a medieval town, curious, original and interesting, with the many superimposed tiers of its houses arranged in an amphitheatre and overlooked on all sides by its military and religious monuments. It is a jewel box of old stones. Picturesquely built on a semicircle of hills facing the Dordogne valley, its appearance is most striking. Its streets are narrow and steep; its Romanesque and Gothic churches, its convents and its cloisters make it a jewel of archaeology.

Most of the monuments of its glorious past still exist. The principal ones are: the grotto of the Hermit Saint Émilion with, opposite, the remains of the monastery of his disciples, the catacombs that contain their sarcophagi and, alongside, the beautiful monolithic church that they carved out. For several centuries, from the 9^th to the 13^th, these monks indeed hollowed out, in the flanks of the rocky hill overlooking their refuge, the unique, extraordinary monolithic church, an underground cathedral in which one walks over funerary slabs through galleries of tombs.

Beside these wonders stand the Château du Roi, the Collegiate church, the Cardinal's palace, the Grande Muraille, the Cordeliers convent, the ramparts, the moats and the old walls surrounding the town, and so on. Such is Saint-Émilion, a necropolis of convents, chapels and monuments.

Its winegrowing fame, owed above all to its slope wines, springs from the wines produced in the six parishes, now grouped into five communes, that were called the "five sisters" and of which Saint-Émilion must be regarded as the eldest, or at least the most perfect:

• • Saint-Émilion and Saint-Martin-de-Mazerat, forming the commune of Saint-Émilion,
• • Saint-Christophe-des-Bardes,
• • Saint-Laurent-des-Combes,
• • Saint-Hippolyte,
• • Saint-Étienne-de-Lisse.

These five communes sit on the line of hills parallel to the Dordogne, which flows through the plain south of Saint-Émilion, some three to four kilometres from their base. These hills extend from west to east for nearly eight kilometres, from Le Mayne to Saint-Étienne-de-Lisse; their width is about three and a half kilometres.

Around these five sisters we find more or less distant "cousins" generally producing good wines that more or less resemble those of Saint-Émilion.

For a long time, moreover, they laid claim to the name Saint-Émilion. It was only by a judgment of the Libourne civil court of 24 November 1921, confirmed in 1923 by the Bordeaux court of appeal and in 1929 by the Court of Cassation, that the problem was settled. They have the right to add the name Saint-Émilion to their own, thus creating the appellations d'origine contrôlées Lussac-Saint-Émilion, Montagne-Saint-Émilion, Puisseguin-Saint-Émilion and Saint-Georges-Saint-Émilion, which we shall study in this same chapter.

The right to the Saint-Émilion appellation was thus recognised for the communes belonging to the former jurisdiction of Saint-Émilion alone. This jurisdiction dates from 1289, at a time when the country was still little cultivated and partly covered, especially in the plain, by considerable forests.

It was Edward 1^st, King of England, who by letters patent granted at Condat in 1289 delimited the jurisdiction of Saint-Émilion, made up of nine parishes, and which today covers the following eight communes: Saint-Émilion, Saint-Étienne-de-Lisse, Saint-Christophe-des-Bardes, Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens, Saint-Laurent-des-Combes, Saint-Pey-d'Armens, Saint-Hippolyte, Vignonet.

The right to the appellation d'origine contrôlée Saint-Émilion was therefore reserved only for wines produced in the eight aforementioned communes. On 24 December 1973, a law extended this right to the Libourne vineyards situated in the geographical area of the Sables-Saint-Émilion appellation. As a result, the latter was abolished. Indeed, as the soils of the "wine-growing" part of the town of Libourne were gradually disappearing owing to the expansion of the "urban" part of the town, we can understand the INAO's decision to abolish an appellation whose territorial area seemed inevitably doomed to disappear.

The area entitled to the Saint-Émilion AOCs is bounded to the north by a small watercourse, the Barbanne, to the east by the Castillon hills, to the south-east and south by the Dordogne plain that stretches from Castillon to Libourne, and to the west by another, slightly higher plain, with which it merges towards Libourne.

To the north-west, between Libourne and the Saint-Émilion hills, lie the gently rolling slopes of Pomerol, a commune whose soil is largely composed of gravelly and sandy ground similar to that of the Médoc, and practically identical to that which Saint-Émilion possesses in this sector.

When one consults a General Staff map, one sees that the topography of the Saint-Émilion area is very rugged, the altitude varying from about 90 metres near the bell tower of the monolithic church to less than 10 metres in the commune of Vignonet. Towards the west and north-west, the slope is relatively gentle, with Châteaux Figeac and Cheval-Blanc lying at about 35 to 40 metres above sea level. By contrast, towards the south, the slope of the hill overlooking the Dordogne is very steep.

If one consults a geological map, one sees a very great diversity of soils and subsoils due to erosion. Indeed, if one wished to go into detail, one would have to distinguish numerous types of subsoil and soil. In a study published in 1934, R. and A. Villepigue distinguish five types of subsoil and six of soil: clay-limestone, silico-limestone, silico-clay, sandy, sand-gravel and alluvial loams known as "palus". They end their study by defining seventeen "different terrains"! According to them, the best growths are to be found on clay-limestone, silico-limestone and clay-siliceous soils, as well as on gravel soils resting on alluvial gravels of the Isle with an iron-pan (alios) layer.

In a more recent study, "Les grands types de sols viticoles de Pomerol et Saint-Émilion" (Connaissance de la vigne et du vin, February 1979), Michèle Guilloux, J. Duteau and G. Seguin distinguish "at least five types of soil":

• • shallow soils on starfish limestone (calcaire à astéries) (Ausone, Canon, etc.), derived from rendzinas, where rooting depth does not exceed a few tens of centimetres and where, consequently, the quantities of assimilable elements and available water at the roots' disposal are limited; the abundance of calcium results in the building of structures of excellent stability;
• • soils established on the slopes formed by the Quaternary gravelly-sandy alluvium of the Isle (Figeac, Cheval-Blanc, etc.), where the vine can extend its root system more deeply;
• • sandy soils, of the same geological origin but without gravel or stones, probably wind-borne deposits, where the extension of the roots is sometimes limited by a fairly shallow water table;
• • clay-sandy soils, more or less calcareous, which make up the terroirs of many Classified Growths;
• • soils of very clayey texture (at Pomerol in particular), where the proportions of particles smaller than 2 micrometres are so great that one would hesitate to classify them within the appellation zones if, at present, wines of exceptional quality were not being produced there.

And their conclusion is as follows: the most renowned wines of this region are thus produced on fundamentally different soils, derived from parent rocks of great diversity. The characters of these wines vary according to their origin but, in every case, they are products of high quality. From this point of view, the role of the parent rocks seems rather secondary, and it must be recalled that in the Bordeaux region there is no geological formation holding the privilege of quality.

In 1982, Professor Enjalbert, completing his masterly study Les Grands Vins de Saint-Émilion, Pomerol et Fronsac (Bardi edition, 1983), discerned six to seven types of soil. And, as regards in particular the commune of Saint-Émilion, whose soils are exceedingly varied, Professor Enjalbert identified five main types of terrain:

• • the limestone plateau, covered with shallow clay-limestone and clay-sandy soils;
• • the slopes and "foot of slope" areas, whose soils, little different from those of the plateau, result from erosion and from scree from the plateau and the slopes, forming a more or less narrow band whose gradient is sometimes very steep;
• • the old gravels, situated to the north-north-west of the commune and dating from the Quaternary period. These gravels, which have a fairly coarse grain size, sometimes contain siliceous pebbles the size of a fist;
• • the old sands, situated in the west and made up of coarse sands of wind-borne origin, containing consequently neither gravel nor pebbles;
• • the clay-gravelly soils, situated west of the preceding ones and towards the south, of recent origin, found in the plain on either side of the main road from Libourne to Castillon-la-Bataille, as well as in the part of the commune of Libourne that formerly benefited from the appellation d'origine contrôlée Sables-Saint-Émilion. 

Professor Enjalbert had agreed to give us some details on the nature of the soils of the Premiers Grands Crus Classés and the Grands Crus Classés. They appear opposite the names of each of these growths in the table of Classified Growths.

In December 1989, Cornelis van Leeuwen and the Saint-Émilion winegrowers' association, with the cooperation of INRA and the Bordeaux Institute of Oenology, published a soil map of the Saint-Émilion vineyards accompanied by an explanatory booklet of ninety-two pages. This remarkable work enables us to observe that most of the Classified Growths are situated on calci-magnesian soils (plateau, slopes and foot of slope, or on the so-called Figeac and Pomerol gravels or on old sands). This work also illustrates and perfectly highlights the notion of terroir, the very foundation of an appellation.

We shall try to indicate briefly how the soils and subsoils of Saint-Émilion are arranged.

On the top of the plateau, or tertre, the soil is very often clay-limestone or clay-sandy, fairly compact, and makes up the terroir of many Classified Growths.

Towards the north and west, the scree caused by erosion gives skeletal soils well suited to the vine. Towards the west, one descends to a terrace made up of sands, gravels and clay extending towards the Pomerol plateau. As one approaches the latter, there are a few gravel knolls deposited long ago by the Isle and the Dronne, forming a soil that, with a particular topography, has formed the terroir of excellent Classified Growths. These two kinds of terrain sometimes contain iron-pan concretions (alios) known as "crasse de fer". In the east, the soils are clay-limestone or clay-sandy. In the south, they consist of sands and gravel closely related to the subsoil. It should be noted that the communes of Saint-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens, Saint-Pey-d'Armens and Vignonet lie at an altitude below 25 metres, which is that of the foot of the slope, the altitude falling as low as 5 to 6 metres at the edge of the Dordogne. Their soil and subsoil consist of sands and gravel, recent alluvium of the Dordogne. Thus these soils, which contain clay, limestone and silica in very variable proportions according to their situation, in the form of gravels and sands, themselves rest on very varied subsoils: starfish limestone or oyster limestone of marine origin, wind-blown sands, clay, sands, alluvial gravels more or less iron-panned, depending on whether they were deposited by the Isle, the Dronne or the Dordogne, sandy or clayey Quaternary alluvium, and so on.

The subsoil is often very close to the surface, in particular on what we might call the tertres and the slopes:

• • in the west, it is mainly composed of starfish limestone or oyster limestone of marine origin;
• • in the north, of Fronsadais molasse and limestone;
• • in the east, of starfish limestone and molasse;
• • in the south, once one has passed the foot of the slope, it is formed of old alluvium of the Dordogne, making up two terraces descending to about the 6-metre contour. But it must not be forgotten that, except in the south, it has undergone the often violent effects of erosion and is very jagged.

In summary, from what we have just set out, it is evident that the nature of the soils and subsoils, which are exceedingly diverse, greatly influences the quality of the wines. The vines are called upon to produce, according to their exposure and situation, wines very different from one another and which are very difficult to classify by origin.