2023 Château Pavie, St Emilion, Bordeaux
Critics reviews
Plus damson and black cherry fruits, rich and ripe but balanced by tomato leaf, pumice stone. This is intense and concentrated, skilfully constructed showing fragrant cumin and turmeric spice that lifts through the palate, opening to show black tea, blood orange, cocoa bean, mint leaf, totally delicious and speaks clearly of its limestone soils. Feels at the top of its game. Harvest September 18 to October 5, 72% new oak for ageing, Gerard Perse owner.
Drink 2033 - 2048
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux (April 2024)
The 2023 Pavie was picked from September 18 to October 5 at 32.76hL/ha, with some Cabernet Franc actually picked after the Cabernet Sauvignon. Raised in 72% new French oak plus one-year-old barrels, this has a very well-defined and fresh bouquet that articulates the terroir with some style. It is completely different from the Pavie wines I tasted at the estate 10 to 15 years ago—more classical and sophisticated. The palate is medium-bodied with a clean and precise entry. It's lightly spiced with a subtle marine influence—shucked oyster shells and seaweed are embroidered through the black fruit. There's a dash of black pepper toward the finish that remains focused and feels long in the mouth. This is an excellent Pavie in the making.
Drink 2030 - 2060
Neal Martin, Vinous.com (April 2024)
The 2023 Pavie is fabulous. Rich, dense and explosive in the glass, it offers up generous dark red fruit, cedar, spice, pipe tobacco, menthol and mocha. The 2023 impresses with its notable density and sheer palate presence. Naturally, this needs time to be at its best, but it is already incredibly expressive. This is a superb vintage for Pavie.
Drink 2031 - 2063
Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com (April 2024)
The 2023 Pavie is deep garnet-purple in color. It needs a few moments of swirling to unlock scents of blueberry pie, cassis, and preserved plums, eventually giving way to a gorgeous perfume of violets, star anise, cedar chest, and iron ore. The medium to full-bodied palate shimmers with bright, fresh black fruit layers, framed by firm, ripe, rounded tannins and Pavie's signature tension, finishing very long and very fragrant. This is breathtaking! The blend is 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and 17% Cabernet Sauvignon, with pH 3.66.
Drink 2030 - 2060
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, The Wine Independent (May 2024)
51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, 17% Cabernet Sauvignon. Cask sample.
An elegant Pavie this year, the power reined in and discreet. Complex floral and dark-fruit bouquet. Suave texture, the tannins finely honed. Long and fresh with a saline finish.
Drink 2032 - 2050
James Lawther MW, JancisRobinson.com (April 2024)
The depth and intensity is really out of this world. The richness is there, but it's all in balance and has an almost weightless feel to it. It's medium- to full-bodied with purity and definition, and the magic of limestone soils keeps the pH low, giving energy, bright acidity and verve. Terrific young red. 51% merlot, 32% cabernet franc and 17% cabernet sauvignon.
James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (April 2024)
Aromatic nose, clean and clear, lovely pristine black and red fruits, some dark chocolate with violets, graphite and liquorice. Gorgeous succulence, this is so clear and crystalline with some juicy strawberry and bitter orange. A touch of tension gives the backbone and structure - great direction and movement from start to finish. Poised and piercing - so direct - I love the finesse and refinement, everything feels so elegant. Layered and complex but with zing, a sense of life and tons of energy. Still compact, no doubt, as you'd expect but tannins are fine and the wine has been well constructed - this will be delicious. An impressive showing for Pavie in 2023. 3.66pH.
Drink 2034 - 2050
Georgina Hindle, Decanter (April 2024)
The Grand Vin 2023 Château Pavie is based on 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Cabernet Sauvignon that was brought up in 72% new oak. It's a more inward, serious effort that has a layered bouquet of ripe red and black fruits, spicy oak, spring flowers, and smoke tobacco. This carries to a full-bodied 2023 revealing a beautiful sense of minerality, ample mid-palate depth, and a gorgeous finish. It shows the more elegant, vibrant style of the vintage while still being classic Pavie. If anything, it reminds me slightly of the château's 2001.
Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com (May 2024)
About this WINE
Chateau Pavie
Château Pavie is the largest St.Emilion 1er Grand Cru Classé, with over 35 hectares of vineyards located exclusively on the St-Emilion Côtes. Pavie is situated south-east of the village of St-Emilion and its vineyards lie on a south-facing slope of the famous limestone plateau.
Pavie's vineyards are bordered by those of Château La Gaffelière and Château Pavie-Decesse. For many years the property was owned and run by Jean-Paul Valette. In 1998 Gérard Perse, who also owns Pavie-Decesse and Monbousquet, purchased it.
Pavie's wine is typically a blend of 55% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Since 1998, the grapes have been fermented in spanking new wooden vats with the wine then being aged in 100% new oak bariques for 18 months. It is bottled unfiltered.
Pavie produces elegant, harmonious and stylish St-Emilions that typically display a fine bouquet with good depth of fruit on the palate. Under the Perse regime Pavie has become richer, more intense and more concentrated.
St Émilion
St Émilion is one of Bordeaux's largest producing appellations, producing more wine than Listrac, Moulis, St Estèphe, Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux put together. St Emilion has been producing wine for longer than the Médoc but its lack of accessibility to Bordeaux's port and market-restricted exports to mainland Europe meant the region initially did not enjoy the commercial success that funded the great châteaux of the Left Bank.
St Émilion itself is the prettiest of Bordeaux's wine towns, perched on top of the steep limestone slopes upon which many of the region's finest vineyards are situated. However, more than half of the appellation's vineyards lie on the plain between the town and the Dordogne River on sandy, alluvial soils with a sprinkling of gravel.
Further diversity is added by a small, complex gravel bed to the north-east of the region on the border with Pomerol. Atypically for St Émilion, this allows Cabernet Franc and, to a lesser extent, Cabernet Sauvignon to prosper and defines the personality of the great wines such as Ch. Cheval Blanc.
In the early 1990s there was an explosion of experimentation and evolution, leading to the rise of the garagistes, producers of deeply-concentrated wines made in very small quantities and offered at high prices. The appellation is also surrounded by four satellite appellations, Montagne, Lussac, Puisseguin and St. Georges, which enjoy a family similarity but not the complexity of the best wines.
St Émilion was first officially classified in 1954, and is the most meritocratic classification system in Bordeaux, as it is regularly amended. The most recent revision of the classification was in 2012
Merlot
The most widely planted grape in Bordeaux and a grape that has been on a relentless expansion drive throughout the world in the last decade. Merlot is adaptable to most soils and is relatively simple to cultivate. It is a vigorous naturally high yielding grape that requires savage pruning - over-cropped Merlot-based wines are dilute and bland. It is also vital to pick at optimum ripeness as Merlot can quickly lose its varietal characteristics if harvested overripe.
In St.Emilion and Pomerol it withstands the moist clay rich soils far better than Cabernet grapes, and at it best produces opulently rich, plummy clarets with succulent fruitcake-like nuances. Le Pin, Pétrus and Clinet are examples of hedonistically rich Merlot wines at their very best. It also plays a key supporting role in filling out the middle palate of the Cabernet-dominated wines of the Médoc and Graves.
Merlot is now grown in virtually all wine growing countries and is particularly successful in California, Chile and Northern Italy.
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Description
Plus damson and black cherry fruits, rich and ripe but balanced by tomato leaf, pumice stone. This is intense and concentrated, skilfully constructed showing fragrant cumin and turmeric spice that lifts through the palate, opening to show black tea, blood orange, cocoa bean, mint leaf, totally delicious and speaks clearly of its limestone soils. Feels at the top of its game. Harvest September 18 to October 5, 72% new oak for ageing, Gerard Perse owner.
Drink 2033 - 2048
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux (April 2024)
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