Vignobles Dourthe Château Pey La Tour Réserve du Château 2021

Château Pey La Tour Réserve du Château is the first wine of this Vignobles Dourthe property, in the Bordeaux Supérieur appellation. It expresses the qualities of the château’s finest terroirs. The vineyard covers 137 hectares in production, on clay-limestone soils, fine gravels over clay and sandy clay, planted at a density of 5,600 to 6,200 vines per hectare.

The grapes are machine-harvested with on-board sorting, through selection within each plot. Winemaking is traditional, carried out in separate lots in temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks, with a cold pre-fermentation maceration on some lots and a maceration period of 28 to 30 days. Ageing lasts 12 months on fine lees, in oak barrels and tanks, including three lots in amphorae.

This wine reveals notes of blackberry, blackcurrant, plum, raspberry, dried flowers, pepper, tobacco and chocolate. The dense colour with garnet hues opens onto blackberry and spices. The round palate, of fine breadth, is carried by present yet silky tannins, and by a fresh finish brought by the Cabernet Sauvignon.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.