Château Pavie

The vine was first planted in the Saint-Émilion area in the 4th century by the Romans on the hillsides of Pavie and Ausone. This foresight of the ancients foretold a hierarchy that would be endorsed many centuries later.
From the 19th century, the wine-growing vocation of Pavie was definitively affirmed. In 1850, Pavie is mentioned in the first edition of “Bordeaux et ses Vins”, among the premiers crus classés of Saint-Émilion. The present estate was then divided among several owning families, including the Tallemans and the Pigasses.
In 1885, the Bordeaux négociant Ferdinand Bouffard acquired all the plots of the Fayard Talleman family, then, through successive purchases, built up a homogeneous vineyard of 50 hectares, whose annual production stood at around 125 to 150 tonneaux. The whole took the name Pavie. It included an independently managed vineyard called Pavie-Decesse. Shortly afterwards, the considerable efforts made by Ferdinand Bouffard, a winegrower as shrewd as he was determined, were destroyed by phylloxera.
A few years later, at the end of the First World War, F. Bouffard sold the property to Albert Porte, who himself sold it, in 1943, to a family of négociants based in Paris, the Valettes. It was under their administration that in 1954, at the official classification of Saint-Émilion wines, Château Pavie rose to the rank of Premier Grand Cru Classé B.
The arrival of Gérard Perse at Pavie, in 1998, was to be the origin of a tremendous leap forward, now endorsed by the unanimity of specialists in the wine world.
The vineyard was completely rethought. The number of missing vines was very high and some plots in very poor condition were grubbed up. They were the subject of a vast replanting plan based on a new balance between grape variety and soil.
2013, a new era: after two years of work, a new vat room was completed, together with a complex comprising a tasting room and a reception room designed by the decorator Alberto Pinto.
Plot-by-plot management is, for Gérard Perse, imperative. The temperature-controlled French oak vats number 21, a number that corresponds to the plots determined after a very thorough soil analysis. These vats have the immense advantage of generating a natural oxidation of the pomace corresponding strictly to its needs.
The crop, harvested by hand, arrives at the cellars in small crates; it is sorted manually before being destemmed. It then undergoes a second, berry-by-berry sorting on a vibrating table. Transport within the cellar is by small vats. This system is particularly gentle on the grapes, as it is gravity-fed, and very hygienic since it avoids pumps and hoses.
This cellar is perfectly insulated thermally: its walls, like the ceiling, are made of two walls separated by an air layer of the same thickness. The materials are all noble, neutral and non-polluting.
At the heart of this complex stands a monumental fresco by the artist Michel Pourteyron, “Grappe Symphonie”, whose explosion of colours “that pour and overflow to express the movement of the bunch” contrasts with the monastic alignment of the barrels.
On tasting, the wines of Château Pavie are characterised by great concentration, much power and intensity. “It is a premier cru, and as such, destined to enter the history of Bordeaux. Pavie is a wine that should give pleasure in ten, twenty, thirty years.
The immense potential of Château Pavie was brought to its height by the arrival of Gérard Perse. Now at the top of the Saint-Émilion hierarchy, Premier Grand Cru Classé A in the latest Saint-Émilion classification of 2012, Pavie is also a magical place to visit.