Château Pédesclaux

Château Pédesclaux

【The sleeping Fifth Growth awakes — a quiet revolution in Pauillac, staged in a house of glass】

Château Pédesclaux was founded in 1810 by the Bordeaux wine broker Pierre Urbain Pédesclaux, who gave the estate his name. Classified a Fifth Growth in the Médoc classification of 1855, it then passed from owner to owner over the long decades that followed, and slipped quietly into sleep as a classified château known only to those in the know.

It was Jacky Lorenzetti, who took the reins in 2009, who woke it. He began with the vineyard. The 26 hectares he inherited have since more than doubled to some 52, with the addition of parcels on the plateau behind Lafite and Mouton and Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated plots adjoining Pontet-Canet. In 2011 a hundred soil pits were dug and nineteen distinct soil types identified: gravel and pebbles carried down by the Garonne, clay and limestone lying beneath — the reasons for Pauillac's greatness, read plot by plot through the lens of science.

Then in 2014 the château itself was transformed. The new winery, designed by the internationally renowned architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, is a bold conception in which a box of glass gently enfolds the old nineteenth-century buildings. It works entirely by gravity, moving juice under the weight of the fruit alone rather than by pump, so that aromas are left intact and the character of each parcel travels straight into the bottle. Technical director Vincent Bache-Gabrielsen steers the winemaking, joined since 2013 by the celebrated oenologist Éric Boissenot as consultant.

The vineyard gained organic certification in 2022, and biodynamic methods are practised on some parcels. The proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon has risen from 46% to 63%, sharpening the taut, upright frame that marks a true Pauillac. Aged fourteen to sixteen months in 50% new oak, the wine offers concentrated blackcurrant and graphite with a clean finish wrapped in fine-grained tannins. Production runs to roughly 9,000 cases a year. The second wine, Fleur de Pédesclaux, drawn mainly from the younger parcels, has an agreeable Merlot roundness and offers a taste of the château's refinement rather earlier in life.