Château Ormes de Pez

The château

Ormes de Pez takes its name from a grove of tall elms that died out in the 1950s, as elms did across Europe; they have been drawn on the label since 2003. The estate lies in the north of Saint-Estèphe, at the edge of the hamlet of Pez, and on the eve of the Revolution it was already the Domaine de Pez, pez meaning peace in the local dialect. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, lists Les Ormes under Southard in 1845, at 100 to 110 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and the 19th century passed it through many hands, among them Southard and Pieck, Carrère and Alibert, and Eschenauer. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, count it among the crus bourgeois supérieurs from 1874; in 1922, under Marcel Alibert, it was an estate of about 35 hectares, 15 of them vines on some of the best land of the commune, whose wines were prized for their body and their finesse.

The Cazes story here begins with a marriage. Around 1880 Marie Cazes married Jean Guillou, the estate’s master winegrower; he was killed in the first hours of the Great War, and she ran the estate on her own. In 1940 her brother Jean-Charles Cazes bought it. Jean-Michel Cazes restored its 18th century buildings in the early 1980s, and the house is now a guesthouse.

The 40 hectares fall into 2 terroirs, both well drained: gravel of quartz and rolled pebbles for the Cabernets, and cooler clay and sand for the Merlot. They are planted 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. Under Rafaël Destruhaut-Balladu, the vineyard manager, the vines are farmed with measured spraying and fallows sown with flowers; since 2010 the team has mapped uniform zones inside each plot from satellite photographs, and a massal selection keeps the estate’s old vine stock. The grapes are picked by hand. Daniel Llose and Nicolas Labenne run the winemaking, in temperature-controlled steel vats with about 20 days of fermentation and maceration, and the wine spends 15 months on average in French oak, 45% new.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Estèphe

Commune

Saint-Estèphe, at the edge of the hamlet of Pez

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Cazes family, since 1940

Direction

Daniel Llose and Nicolas Labenne, the winemaking; Rafaël Destruhaut-Balladu, the vineyard

Vineyard

40 hectares

Soil

Gravel of quartz and rolled pebbles; clay and sand Terroir of Saint-Estèphe →

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 54%, Merlot 37%, Cabernet Franc 7%, Petit Verdot 2%

Farming

Measured spraying; flowering fallows; massal selection

Cellar

Picked by hand; about 20 days in steel vats; 15 months on average in French oak, 45% new

The house

Also Château Lynch-Bages, Pauillac

In history

A cru bourgeois supérieur from 1874; 35 hectares, 15 of vines, in 1922