Château La Gomerie

The château

La Gomerie is an old name on land that has fed several estates. Charles Cocks, whose Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins first appeared in 1850, already had 2 growers at La Gommerie, as the books spelled it, in the second class of the Haut-Saint-Émilion: Dutour with 20 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) and Descordes with 10. By 1868 Dutour’s son-in-law, Paillet, held the larger part, and his widow kept it through the 1890s at 30 tonneaux among the second growths. The land was generous to its neighbors: Château Franc Mayne was cut out of La Gommerie, and Château Laroze-Gurchy was built partly out of Camus-La Gommerie, bought in 1882 and 1883. The word Château first went before the name in 1908, in Édouard Féret’s Saint-Émilion et ses vins.

The modern La Gomerie was a short story. The Bécot family of Château Beau-Séjour Bécot made it from 1995: Merlot alone, from little more than 2 hectares of clay and limestone, from vines 44 years old on average, picked by hand, fermented in stainless steel and raised entirely in new barrels, about 10,000 bottles a year. The last vintage was 2011, and the vines went back into Beau-Séjour Bécot. The bottles that remain are all the La Gomerie there will be. I tasted the 2006 from magnum in April 2025, and it was my favorite wine of the evening: a welcoming nose, complex tertiary notes and perfectly integrated tannins, a wine developed all round, from a firmer Right Bank year of ripe Merlot framed by fresh tannin. Writing about it again in October 2025, I called it terrific.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

Classification

No classification

Last owners

The Bécot family, of Château Beau-Séjour Bécot

Vintages

1995 to 2011

Vineyard

Little more than 2 hectares; vines 44 years old on average

Soil

Clay and limestone Terroir of Saint-Émilion →

Grapes

Merlot 100%

Cellar

Picked by hand; stainless steel vats; raised entirely in new barrels

Production

About 10,000 bottles a year

In history

Dutour at 20 tonneaux in 1850; the widow Paillet at 30 in the 1890s; Franc Mayne and part of Laroze-Gurchy cut from the same land