A Visit of Château Pavie (page 2 of 2)

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Gerard Perse, one of the most important men in the Bordeaux wine industry, took me on a three-hour tour of Château Pavie in St Emilion. See for yourself how this man turned a failing château into one of the most prized wines in the region. Complete with many pictures and my 360° panorama of the huge limestone cellar and exclusive heart-to-heart interview with Perse.

As we spoke, Perse apologized and took a call on his cellphone. A few words, then I'm sorry, it was my wife Chantal. She is in Hong Kong for a show and is presenting Pavie to hotel wine buyers. A tough job. Top French wines sell mostly abroad, in America, Asia and Europe. In France the market for high-end wines is minuscule. I sell only about 5 or 6% of our production in France. I sell more wine in Switzerland than in the whole of France. But that takes a lot of travelling. As I point out that travelling the world must have its positive sides, Mr Perse casts me a tired look. When I go to the USA every day it's a new plane, a new city and a new hotel. I have two business lunches a day and spend the rest visiting wine shops. I like the people I meet but this is not walk in the park and I never have one hour to visit anything. For a wine road warrior, Perse certainly is in shape. As a former jockey and cycling champion, he still rides his racing bike over the hills of St Emilion several times a week and never less than 30km (20 miles). Regular exercise, a healthy cash-flow and a moderate but regular intake of red wine - the recipe for a long life.

Perse started out at 14 as a jockey, then moved on to open a small grocery store. A driven and very meticulous man, he moved on to open a supermarket, then six, which he sold for €68 million after tax. He moved to St Emilion near Bordeaux, where he first bought four wine estates and finally Pavie for €36 million in 1998. This certainly proved a good investment and I am confident we will see a Persian dynasty for generations rule over this wine Empire. His daughter already works at Pavie.

So, is it all about money for Mr Perse? I think not. Mr Perse retired a wealthy man after having sold his hypermarts near Paris, and lives in his castle on a 15 hectares estate. But for him, the money is just a yardstick and a consequence of the success of a much larger pursuit - knocking out the Grim Reaper with a bottle of Château Pavie. As I have understood him, Perse aims to put his mark on the St Emilion wine history. 'When people open this bottle in 20 or 40 years, they might say, this is one of the finest wines made in that time'. Eternity in a bottle, that is the master plan.

Let's hear it from the wine itself, spoken from the bottle in Beaudelaire's The Soul of Wine:

For I feel a boundless joy when I flow
Down the throat of a man worn out by his labor;
His warm breast is a pleasant tomb
where I'm much happier than in my cold cellar.

When the cork has been pulled out of all of us, some life lover will open a bottle of Château Pavie and the spirit of the men who worked to make this beautiful wine will emerge from the flask and take the drinker in its warm embrace for a moment. When our names will have been washed from the sand, somebody will remember Mr Perse and how he resurrected Pavie.

Let us now move down to the chais [shay], where the wine is designed, fermented and stored.

All châteaux in the Bordelais are just glorified farms with grand towers and embellishments brought about by successive owners. They are not real castles in the sense of a center of military or political power. Pavie is still elegant and simple, with the production and storage on the left and the offices on the right. But not for long.

Mr Perse walked me through his imminent redevelopment of Pavie and although it will still look modest and well integrated in the landscape, the inside will be much larger. A subterranean garage will be dug 6 meters/20' below the vineyard and a new floor will be created underneath the existing chais (see below). Most importantly, a huge hall opening on large terraces will let Pavie welcome guests, wine critics and journalists in a surrounding worthy of a Premier Grand Cru Classé A, the highest class of St-Emilion wines and Mr Perse's aspiration for Pavie. I am confident he will realize his dream some day.

The first thing Perse did after he bought Pavie was to replace the former stainless steel fermentation vats with brand new all-wood vats. In some very prestigious châteaux they have the vats but when you visit the portholes are always closed. In fact the inside is lined with stainless steel and they only have the wood for the decor. But we believe wood is essential as it lets the wine sip oxygen just as much or as little as it requires, explained Perse, lowering his voice. The grapes are brought on a large sorting table on the other side of the hall, where six girls check each grape before placing them in a conveyor belt on the gallery. A sharp screw tears and crushes the grapes right above each vat in succession, and the grapes fall down. They will ferment and soak up the tannin in the grapes' skins and stems for days before moving on to the chais.

We descended into the sandstone cellar, cavernous, large like an airplane hangar filled with barrels and met Laurent Lusseau, the youthful maître de chais (cellmaster), the third most important person at Pavie after Monsieur Perse and his wife Chantal. He is the man who watches the wine every day in the storehouse. Pavie is made using modern winemaking techniques sometimes inspired by Burgundy, the archrival of Bordeaux. Perse does not hide his many innovations, such as manually mixing the top grape skins and stems layer with the fermenting wine, or cooling down the fermenting vats to increase aromatic richness. Many people in Bordeaux followed suit after they saw the good results we had obtained with these techniques. It is our privilege to help our wine industry to move ahead and make tomorrow's wines rather than harping on yesterday's wines, explained Perse.

If you haven't already seen it, don't miss the 360° panorama of the chais (QuickTime, 920Kb). The oak barrels are quite impressive, each costing over €650/$1000. Much different from the used American Bourbon barrels you see in almost all Single Malt Scotch distilleries, for instance. Seeing the cavernous cellar made me wonder why Perse needed the extra floor he will soon build. When we do the assemblage, combining the wine now stored in these barrels, we have to bring huge stainless steel vats from another of my châteaux. We pour the barrels into those vats and bottle them. There is almost no space left upstairs to even move and we urgently need more space, explained Perse.

I often heard wine-lovers say It would be a pity to drink this wine before it's 10 years old. I always thought that was a rather snobbish statement. Not anymore. Not only it would be a pity, but most probably the wine would be nearly undrinkable. I learned that at my expenses during my Pavie wine tasting:

The beautiful wine made at Pavie is designed to keep for 20 years or more, and it is hardly drinkable before it is 10 years old. The problem is that at Pavie, like most successful châteaux, 80% of the wine is sold right after bottling. This means they need to sell 72,000 bottles of a wine people cannot drink, because the wine is so hard and tannin-rich it almost breaks the glass. This is by design. The wine will gradually turn into an extraordinary product, but that will take a good 10 years and you buy blindfolded. Unless the château can convince people to buy their new wine, no cash will flow into the château to pay workers and new barrels.

The solution to this vital financial problem is the wine critic, of which a château like Pavie receives a hundred every year. How critics can see in the bitter brew the great marvels to come, I don't know. Some must read cards. Others are psychics. Maybe they look at the stars at night above Pavie. I don't really know, but when I tried the Pavie 2007, I had to run for the spittoon. When I emptied the contents of my mouth into it, the spittoon spat back all over my shirt. Monsieur Perse kindly looked away. like Hogwarts' Sorting Hat, it had looked into my liver and saw me for the wine novice I am. I decided to stop wine-fortunetelling and rely on the experience of the seasoned wine drinkers who say it's going to be a good bottle in 10 years' time. I think about 10% of the critics really see the potential of a wine 10 years from now. They try to assess the strength of the tannins and the aromatic richness to predict the wine's future, explained Perse.

Perse also owns the nicest hotel in town, Le Relais de Plaisance, a former inn restored into a luxurious Relais et Châteaux overlooking the city just next to the belfry. That's the view at sunset from the hotel. You can see the whole city, the St-Emilion church and many wineyards including Pavie just opposite. But we didn't come for the view, did we? Let's move inside.

How does Pavie taste? The best would be to try 20-year-old 'Persian' Pavie, but there is no such thing. I ordered a bottle of Château Pavie 1999, the year after the Persian takeover. '1999 is just about ready to drink - 9 years really is a minimum for this type of wine', explains the senior wine waiter while he poured the wine in a huge glass, not to decant but rather to oxygenate the wine. Mr Perse does not filter his wines, so the sommelier left about a fifth of the wine in the bottle. You can't really drink that part as it is mixed will all sorts of grape debris.

Moments later, his colleague came and starts filling my glass. As I took a sip, I almost cried.

Château Pavie [shaataw pavee]
www.chateaupavie.com
Gérard and Chantal Perse
2 Pimpinelle
33330 Saint-Emilion (30km from Bordeau)
France
Tel +33 (0)5 57 55 43 43

Hostellerie de Plaisance
www.hostelleriedeplaisance.com
Hotel and restaurant
Place du Clocher
33330 Saint-Emilion
France
Tel : +33 (0)5 57 55 07 55