2018 Esprit de Pavie Bordeaux AOC 750 ml

Château Pavie’s peer group is clear: The best of the best in Bordeaux.

Their pricing is firmly blue-chip—we’re talking $400+ for a bottle—and they’ve got the 100-point scores and critical praise to back it up, year after year. Grown on the steepest slopes of any top estate in Bordeaux, Pavie is generally recognized to be the most powerful and opulent bottling made in Saint-Émilion. 

Proprietor Gérard Perse purchased the Pavie estate in 1998, and though it was already producing good wines, his attention and resources elevated it to the very upper tier of Bordeaux. Now it's a blue-chip property that’s featured as a prize in the cellars of the most discerning collectors.

Perse is known for a few things: First, his love of opulent, full-throttle wines—which Pavie, and Esprit de Pavie are in spades—and second, his legendary focus and attention to detail in pursuit of quality.

When he bought Château Pavie, Perse poured money into it to take things to the next level. He built all new temperature-controlled fermentation vats and cellars. He then hired legendary consulting winemaker Michel Rolland to run the show, and Rolland rigorously reshaped the vines, cutting yields from 55 hectoliters per hectare to less than 30. Severe pruning and green harvesting further pushed the envelope on ripeness and concentration.

The Esprit de Pavie takes that same ethos and applies it to a wine with absurd value. It’s sourced from vines at Château Pavie itself, as well as a few other Right Bank properties that Gérard Perse owns—including Clos L’Eglise, whose vineyard in the Côte de Castillon is now used exclusively for the production of Esprit.