Esprit de Pavie is the creation of Gerard Perse, the visionary owner of Chateau Pavie in St Emillion, having produced no less than five 100 point wines at the Pavie estate. He and his team could have sat smugly on their laurels, instead they set out to make a more democratic bottle of Bordeaux for wider enjoyment, Esprit de Pavie is made from young vines from all of Perse’s estate’s, including Pavie, this is definitely a smart case of wine to add to the cellar, given the provenance and price, it’s a Bordeaux to snap up for fun and future.
Cabernet Franc
PAVIE
Château Pavie is a Bordeaux estate in Saint-Émilion known for its Merlot-dominant grand vin. It is one of four châteaux with the Premier Grand Cru Classé A status, the highest classification in Bordeaux’s right bank.
The 37-hectare (91-acre) Pavie estate sits on a limestone plateau on a site known to have been planted with vines since Roman times. The current property boundaries were heavily influenced by the land purchases of Ferdinand Bouffard in the late 19th Century. Bouffard bought a number of vineyards and châteaux, laying the foundations not just for Pavie but several of its neighboring estates, although he continued to manage them as separate entities. In the early 20th Century, Château Pavie was divided into three: châteaux Pavie Macquin and Pavie Decesse were created from land from the original estate. Pavie remains the largest of the three and is one of the largest estates in Saint-Émilion.
Château Pavie was named a Premier Grand Cru Classé B at the 1954 classification of Saint-Émilion. Gérard Perse bought Pavie in 1998 (having previously bought Pavie Decesse) and implemented significant upgrades to the vineyards and winery. Many of the vines were replanted, and Michel Rolland was hired as consultant winemaker. Subsequent vintages have been markedly different and have created some controversy. The new wines are known for their riper, fuller and more extracted expressions with high alcohol content. They have been well received by American critic Robert Parker but not so favorably by others, notable in the poor review the 2003 received from Jancis Robinson. In the 2012 review of the Saint-Émillion classification, Château Pavie was elevated to the highest status of Premier Grand Cru Classé A.
The vineyards are planted roughly 60 percent to Merlot, 20 percent to Cabernet Franc and 10 percent to Cabernet Sauvignon. Along with the eponymous grand vin, Pavie makes a second wine called Arômes de Pavie, renamed from Tour Simard in 2005. This is made from younger vines with an average age of less than 10 years, compared to 43 for the grand vin. The total production of the estate is roughly 8000 cases annually.
Silver Thread
Silver Thread Vineyard is a rocky, hillside vineyard, on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake, at the heart of New York’s Finger Lakes region. At this location, the bottom of the lake drops almost 200 feet below sea level, a dramatic mass of water that creates a distinct microclimate on the eastern hillside — cooling breezes in summer, radiating warmth through the winter, and extending the length of the growing season.
Established in 1982, Silver Thread was one of the first Finger Lakes wineries to produce exclusively dry wines from European grape varieties. For its first 20 years (1991-2011), Silver Thread was known as a pioneer in organic farming practices in the Finger Lakes. Heralded winemaker Paul Brock and wine educator Shannon Brock assumed ownership of Silver Thread Vineyard in 2011. At that point, the Brocks began transitioning the winery to a different form of agriculture called Bio-intensive. This holistic, no-till farming approach uses the best of both biology and chemistry to grow premium wine grapes each year. Bio-intensive viticulture includes elements of both organic and biodynamic viticulture. Silver Thread remains a boutique winery focused on sustainability and premium estate wines. The vineyard was expanded to 8 acres in 2014 and 2015 and the Brocks produce 2,000-3,000 cases of wine depending on the vintage.
The winery is named for a local waterfall, Silver Thread Falls, which was an important spiritual site for the local Seneca Indians. The turtle image on our label was carved in a rock beside one of New York’s woodland creeks by a Native American artist many centuries ago. As an earth symbol to the Haudenosaunee people, the turtle reminds us to care for the land and water that give us the gift of wine. This artifact is on display at the New York Botanical Garden in Bronx, NY.
The Winemakers
The Brocks represent the new generation of young winemakers propelling the Finger Lakes to prominence. Winemaker Paul Brock has a Master’s Degree in Enology and Viticulture from Cornell University and Estate Manager Shannon Brock is a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Diploma Holder. Both have prior winemaking experience in the Finger Lakes and New Zealand, and both are wine educators–Paul is a professor of winemaking at Finger Lakes Community College and Shannon teaches WSET courses in the Finger Lakes.
Silver Thread’s winemaking philosophy is vineyard-focused. They believe control over the style of the wine is best achieved by practices during the growing season, picking date, and sorting of grapes during harvest. Levels of sugar, acid and tannin are always natural and unadulterated. After a healthy fermentation, wines are minimally filtered for stability and bottled in order to best express their vineyard origins.
PEREZ CRUZ
Pérez Cruz, a specialist in classical Cabernet Sauvignon from Alto Maipo, produce a wide range of labels totaling slightly over one million bottles per year, all from their estate vineyards…They are focusing on Cabernet Sauvignon as their flagship wine. Nicely crafted wines, on the subtle and elegant side…” Luis Gutierrez, Wine Advocate, #222
A Cabernet Sauvignon specialist from the Andes portion of the Maipo Valley of Chile, Vina Perez Cruz is a family-owned winery specialized exclusively in the production of red wines from mostly Bordeaux varieties that are bottled on site and reflect the character and identity of the Maipo Alto Valley.
The Pérez Cruz family’s primary objective is to express their estate’s personality through wines with character and identity. The wines are 100% single-estate origin, which affords the winery total control of the outstanding fruit which arrives at full maturity and with uniform ripeness. French-trained winemaker German Lyon, assisted by the occasional consult from Álvaro Espinoza, one of the leading biodynamic experts in the country, takes a gentle and diligent approach to handling the fruit, which flows through the multi-level gravity-fed winery without pumps.
Here in the rolling foothills of the Andes Mountains, soils are deep, stony, and poor in nutrients. The Mediterranean-like climate offers dry and very sunny summers with vast swings between daytime and nighttime temperatures—the ideal combination for producing high-quality wines with ripe fruit and driving acidity. Rocky soils and a temperate microclimate create exceptional growing conditions. The cooling influence of the Andes mountain air mingles with mild Pacific Ocean breezes to create the conditions for slow ripening and long hang times, which lead to fresh, vibrant fruit flavors married to local aromatic herbs, mouthwatering natural acidity and polished tannins.
The crown-jewel of the estate, the Liguai vineyard is nestled directly against the mountain foothills at just under 1,700 feet elevation. Here a mixture of alluvial and colluvial can be found, which give incredible complexity to a Red Blend and a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon that are fermented on indigenous yeasts in a delicate mix of wood barrels both new and used. Their “Chaski” Petit Verdot is a fascinating wine: a uniquely balanced and harmonious bottling of an often temperamental grape, grown on exclusively alluvial soils with a higher than usual percentage of clay. The word “Chaski” refers to the ancient Inca for “messenger,” and in fact celebrates an actual Incan “chaski” trail, marked by stone-lined paths as can be seen on the label, that is found on the family property. Yet, the most impressive wine of the line-up might just be the entry-level Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine with an outstanding amount of personality, balance and elegance at a shockingly affordable price that Luis Gutierrez described in the Wine Advocate as “…really open, expressive and aromatic, with bright red fruit and a balsamic, minty and pungent note that makes it very attractive and distinctively Maipo in the nose. The palate is silky and soft, polished and sleek.”
The winery was built of native types of wood with two barrel-shaped central naves, exterior arches that evoke the passing of wind through trees, and stone foundations that recall the structures the Incas left behind in the area. Its sustainable design incorporates a gravity-flow process and has a three-million-liter capacity. By taking advantage of the conditions below ground, temperature and humidity are controlled naturally in the barrel cellar, which has a capacity for 5,000 barrels.
Les Carrelets
For centuries, the city of Bordeaux has acted as a beacon of maritime culture and commerce. Throughout the more rural areas of the Gironde estuary, evidence of this is in plain sight – the carrelets, or stilted huts, lining the river bank in a unique array of colors, shapes and sizes, allow us a glimpse into the past of what this booming capital of industry may have looked like without the bustling ports, massive chateaux and international tourism that is now most closely associated with this region.
The Les Carrelets family of wines uses grapes sourced from small-scale farmers, not from a careless co-op or a monstrous corporate estate. Because of this, each vintage reflects only the most important thing: the wine. No stuffy consultants, no million-dollar marketing; just the wine how it was intended to be enjoyed.
Chateau La Naude
Chateau La Naude is located north of Saint-Emilion, just outside the village of Gauriaguet. The property, managed by winemaker Jean-Michel Garcion, consists of 18.5 hectares planted with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet-Franc. Jean-Michel was passionate about viticulture from a very young age, and received his diploma in Viticulture and Oenology at Le Landreau in 1984. He finally settled at La Naude after ten years of working harvests around the world and has been a fixture at this family-owned estate since 1991.
The vineyards of La Naude are situated on highly-coveted limestone and clay soils, which, in an otherwise nutrient-poor environment, provide their Merlot with signature minerality. The vines on the property range in age from 10-20 years old.
Proprietor Jacques De Schepper of De-Mour comes from a family tradition of wine and spirits, starting with his father who began in the 1930s by producing jenever and other regional liquors in the Belgian town of Ghent. After expanding their import business in the 1960s, the De Schepper family acquired several Bordeaux estates, eventually taking ownership of five Chateaux across the region with the goal of returning these neglected facilities to their former glory. Chateau La Naude was Jacques’ prize acquisition in 1996, and he remains involved in its daily management to this day.