Chateau Le Pin, Pomerol
After five years of living in Bordeaux, I finally made it to Le Pin. That isn’t quite as slack as it sounds, as this tiny estate (currently measuring 2.2 hectares, but with one plot pulled up for replanting, so 1.95 under vine for the 2009 harvest) has just as much mystique in Bordeaux as it does abroad, and visits are not exactly advertised in the local paper. But still, I was starting to question my luck, as I have twice had to miss intended trips here.
Anyway, all this meant that I was very happy to find myself driving up to the famous pine tree (finding it is the first test, as there is no sign, and certainly no big chateau building to let you know when you’ve arrived). In my intro to the Pomerol section of Wine Travel Guides, I write that this appellation is almost ‘masochistically low-key’, and nowhere is this more true than at Le Pin. Two lonely trees (only one is The Pine, and even that was damaged in the 1999 storms so has a rather straggly top) outside a grey pebble-dash building that has been described by various people as a ‘Swiss chalet’ and a ‘small house with flaking render’.
What is it that makes Le Pin so special? For a start, its terroir is very different from even the surrounding properties in Pomerol, with three metres deep of gravel that are planted to merlot (not to cabernet sauvignon, as would be usual with gravel in most places). There are also small amounts of cabernet franc on the estate, but only the merlot makes it into Le Pin. The vines are an average of 35 years old, and because of the singular terroir at this spot, even if they wanted to, they could not further expand the area of Le Pin without compromising its taste.
Chateau Le Pin was first produced in 1979, the year when the Thienpont family (wine merchants from Belgium) purchased the property from Madame Loubie, whose family had owned it since 1924. The Thienpont family owns six properties in Bordeaux including the neighbouring Vieux Chateau Certan, so they may have seemed like an obvious choice to take over an illustrious Pomerol estate. In fact, in 1979 there was no such wine as Le Pin, and all the wine made from the one hectare of vines owned by Madame Loubie were sent off to be made into generic Pomerol.
At the time, Léon Thienpont at VCC took the collection money for the local Pomerol church, and so knew all the villagers very well. Madame Loubie had asked him for years to take the one hectare off her hands, as none of her children wanted it, and she thought he could integrate it into VCC, as the vines are right next door. Léon had five children, and all agreed that this was a good idea, except Léon himself, who felt that at 14 hectares he had enough vines.
Eventually Leon, his brother Marcel and Marcel's son Jacques agreed to make it as a separate wine, and a few years later Jacques’ cousin Alexandre (Leon's son and now owner at VCC) bought out Jacque's father. Today, Alexandre takes care of the vines, and Jacques the vinification, together with the maitre de chai from Vieux Chateau Certan. In 1984 they bought an extra hectare that had belonged to the local blacksmith (various sources have attributed this parcel also to a baker, but I’m going to stick with the blacksmith).
Le Pin doesn’t take its name from the ‘lieu dit’, or actual location, as many Bordeaux properties do, instead it comes from the single pine tree that grows in front of the modest winemaking building. The very limited production of Chateau Le Pin ranges from 500 to 600 cases per year, and as with Petrus these are rarely sold in cases of 12, but instead of six or even three. The vinification is done in two small rooms under the house of the property using stainless steel fermenting tanks and oak barrels for malolactic and aging, where the wine stays for around 18-22 months depending on vintage. There were 14 barrels of the 2008, 100% Seguin Moreau, all new oak, medium toast.
We tasted individual lots from the barrel, rather than the final blend for the 2008. Each lot is vinifed according to the age of the vine, and we tasted a barrel of 1998 young vines, then from vines planted in 1978 and in 1970, and finally a barrel of press wine (there are one and a half barrels of press wine, and even this tasted incredibly silky, with rich but soft tannins, and quite unlike most press wines that I have tasted. Alexandre called the press wine (made with a very gentle pneumatic press), ‘the signature of Le Pin, our business card’). Each barrel, even from the such homogenous terroir, tasted very different according to the age of the vines, with the youngest tasting almost herbal and nutty, the 1978 very profound and silky, with enormously rich fruits, and the oldest vines with perfectly defined ‘croquant’ fruit, light as a feather but rich and soft at the same time. This one Alexandre compared to La Tache!
The vats vary in size from 50 hectolitres down to around 10, but the largest ones are rarely used. And I am particularly glad that I got to see Le Pin as it now stands, so famously un self-concious, as the whole cellar is about to be rebuilt. With the amount of space they have, I doubt very much that the new building is going to be particularly flash, but I am glad that one day in the future I can casually drop into conversation, 'oh yes, I remember that quiet little building in Pomerol, barely more than a shed...'.
Le Pin, 33500 Pomerol
Telephone: +33 (0) 5 57 51 33 99