Pavie's Neighbour Across the Line

Castillon is the appellation immediately east of Saint-Émilion, and its geology does not respect the border. The clay-limestone plateau that underlies Pavie and the other great estates of the Saint-Émilion côtes continues into Castillon, and a handful of producers have spent the last two decades pointing that out by buying land there and making wine as if the line did not exist.

Gérard Perse, the owner of Château Pavie, was one of the first and most conspicuous. He and his wife bought Clos Les Lunelles in 2001 — eight and a half hectares, mostly Merlot with a little Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, on the plateau’s natural extension — and put the Pavie team to work on it. The wine is made in the modern Right Bank idiom the Perse properties are known for: ripe, dense, concentrated, generous with new oak, and built to impress early.

The Year

2006 on the Right Bank was a good vintage that lived in the shadow of the 2005 before it — a warm summer, a wet September, and wines that were structured and sometimes a little firm. Merlot on limestone handled the rain better than Merlot on heavier ground, and Castillon’s best sites made solid, ageworthy wine.

In the Glass

Opened at home late on a Sunday evening, after the Colin-Morey Bourgogne. Fourteen years from the vintage.

Deep garnet, only slightly bricked at the rim. The nose was ripe and glossy — plum and black cherry, mocha, a sweet vanilla and toast layer from the barrel that had integrated without disappearing, and a warm, earthy, slightly tarry depth. The limestone showed as a cool, chalky note underneath the richness.

On the palate it was full-bodied and smooth, with tannins that had softened to velvet and a texture that was plush through the middle. Acidity was moderate but adequate. The finish was long, on cocoa and dark fruit, with a mineral edge at the very end that kept it from being simply sweet.

A Castillon made with a Saint-Émilion first growth’s resources, at fourteen years, tasting like a serious Right Bank wine from a good year. The appellation boundary is a legal fact. The plateau is a geological one, and the wine was on the plateau’s side.