2016 Château Pape Clément Pessac-Léognan 750 ml

At almost 800 years young, Bordeaux’s oldest Grand Cru Classé never goes out of style. Both vintages we’ve offered of Château Pape Clément have earned perfect five-out-of-five ratings from our members, and we’re anticipating a hat trick with the 98-point 2016.

A majestic, deep-purple paragon of viscosity and power, James Suckling called this Pape Clément “almost literally breathtaking” before rating it up with its most famous 2016 Pessac-Léognan neighbors: the 97-point La Mission Haut-Brion ($550) and 100-point Haut-Brion ($800+). This Pape Clément bears all the hallmarks of the spectacular 2016 vintage—dubbed by Suckling as “the second coming of Bordeaux”—at a fraction of the price.

Traditionally, Pape Clément is more opulent and sumptuous than its peers, but the 2016 pushed the structural envelope a bit further, proving the estate’s centuries-long tradition of never resting on its laurels. It remains as deep, muscular, and brooding as ever, but with more precision and even tighter construction than before.

It was honestly hard to put our pens down when we first assessed this wine. Just as we’d wrap our heads around the infinite chorus of perfectly ripe black currant, plum, cherry, tilled earth, espresso, and toast, another swirl would yield yet another dizzying duet of dried herbs and vanilla, or violets and sweet tobacco.

The complex black fruit dials it up a notch on an entry that’s loaded with secondary mocha, exotic spice, and sultry vanilla. Powerful and dense yet poised with beautiful cut, the firm line of ripe, grainy tannins holds the brilliantly balanced structure through an incredibly long mineral-toned finish. Or as critic Jeb Dunnuck summarized, “About as sexy as it gets in the vintage.”

From the very heart of Bordeaux, Château Pape Clément is one of the region’s oldest wineries, with harvests dating back to 1252. Original owner Bertrand de Goth, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was eventually named Pope Clément V—the very same wine-loving Pope who moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon (eventually inspiring that region’s wines to be called Châteauneuf-du-Pape). As leader of the Holy See, he couldn’t keep his beloved Pessac estate, so he did the next best thing and had it named after him.  

After centuries of being passed from owner to owner, and with almost a millennium of winemaking tradition to uphold, it’s no wonder proprietor Bernard Magrez has never once sacrificed quality for quantity. Since Magrez took over the estate in 1980, Pape Clément has become one of the most expressive, age-worthy, and flat-out delicious wines produced in Bordeaux.

Each time we visit the estate, it’s clear that Pape Clément spares no expense in elevating the terroir that has maintained its legendary status through the Hundred Years War, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Napoleon, two World Wars, and up to today.

Not unlike the grand château that Magrez has filled with priceless antiques, the wines of Pape Clément are show-stopping evocations of the best of Bordeaux. The sandy, gravel-rich soils studded with limestone and clay throughout the 155-acre estate allow the vines to sink their roots deep, absorbing all the character and intensity of this prized real estate.

Magrez then takes it a step further, following the expert hand-sorting in the vineyard with a “berry by berry” selection of only the best grapes on the sorting table. After that, the grapes are gently pressed, soaked for 30 to 40 days with their skins in order to extract the perfect amount of color and complexity, and the wine is aged for a year and a half in French oak, 60% of which is new. This final step lends the wine its generous spice notes, plus a plush texture that’s unusual for a wine that will age so brilliantly for the next 25-plus years.

Magrez has always squeezed the very best from every vintage, which is why Robert Parker has called him “one of Bordeaux’s most interesting visionaries,” and why the wines of Pape Clément have become such critical and sommelier favorites over recent decades.

From the benchmark 2016 vintage, this historic, 98-point Grand Cru Classé earned the same kind of scores as La Mission Haut-Brion and Haut-Brion, but costs just a fraction of those. And with our unrivaled perfect provenance guarantee, no lover of Bordeaux—or Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot for that matter—should be without this ultra-collectible 2016 Pape Clément.