POMEROL

Photo from Elliot Paris on unsplash

From the least comes the most.

Pomerol, at a mere 2,000 acres in vine, is Bordeaux’s smallest red wine district (fewer acres, even, than the smallest of the Médoc appellations, St.-Julien).

But it produces wines more highly sought-after than some of the most famous in all of Bordeaux, and one in particular—Pétrus—that routinely is Bordeaux’s most costly red.

Pomerol’s great seduction is the Merlot grape, planted in about 3/4 of available vineyard land. Cabernet Franc is the second most planted (20-25 percent), while Cabernet Sauvignon—a mainstay across the Gironde in the Médoc—registers a wee 5 percent.

Merlot makes the kind of wine that the world loves: plush, fat, silky of texture, with slap-on-the-back fruit flavors and soft, accessible tannins, and even a smidgeon higher alcohol.

And after a mere 4-5 years after the vintage, Merlot wines also are readier-to-appreciate than Cabernet Sauvignon-based reds (even though in fact Merlot may cellar as long or longer).

The center of the plateau de Pomerol and its nub of clay-based soil makes for Pomerol’s most glamorous wine, Pétrus (superciliously, the word “Château” appears in administrative documents only). In most years, Pétrus is 100 percent Merlot, one of the only wines in Pomerol woven that way.

Dogged by high prices—a ridiculous $4,000-$6,000 a bottle for either Pétrus or Le Pin 2020; a merely larcenous $300 for L’Evangile 2022—Pomerol reds will seem out of reach for most wine buyers.

Nonetheless, some good value Pomerols come from the western section of the appellation on less clay-heavy, sandier soils. In good vintages, $30-$45 a bottle for Domaine de L’Eglise, Clos René or de Sales isn’t too bad.

Visiting Pomerol
You begin any tour of Pomerol winemaking in Libourne, a town of (now) 25,000 founded in the 13th century by Henry III of England and designed as a port of export for the wines of Pomerol, St.-Emilion and Entre-Deux-Mers. (Because the English shipped wines directly from here, bypassing Bordeaux, it was a long time before anyone in the Médoc or Graves actually tasted a Pomerol wine.)

Much of old Libourne remains and, in any case, the town is a beautiful example of preservation and well worth some stopping-off time. Of particular interest to wine folk is the business center of the wine trade, Quai Prieurat, much as it was when built centuries ago.

The vineyards of Pomerol fan out from Libourne into the Bordeaux area’s smallest appellation. They and their manor houses—“châteaux” is a grandiose term for the generally simple estates of Pomerol—are therefore concentrated and easily viewed from along the Pomerol roadways.

If you wish to see Pétrus, look for it at the top of a plateau near the center of Pomerol off road D121. The “château” looks like a clumpy warehouse with a tower. No matter. It makes the most expensive Bordeaux red in existence.