Château Perron

The château

Perron stands beside the church of Lalande-de-Pomerol, built in the 12th century, and the site was lived on long before: Neolithic tools turned up in 1960, when the underground vats were being dug. The estate dates from 1642 and the château from 1647. From 1868 to 1898 it belonged to the Nicolas family, a leading bourgeois growth of the commune at 15 to 20 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), medaled at Paris in 1877 and again in 1878. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, printed it Au Peyron in their tables, a spelling the estate never used; Perron is the name it carried then and carries now. The Massonie family has held it since 1958: Auguste Massonie, then his son Michel-Pierre, and since 2000 the 3 children, Béatrice, Bertrand and Thibault.

The vineyard has grown from 23 hectares to 36.17 through a partnership with the Crouvezier family, on sandy gravel over a subsoil of iron oxide. It is planted 80% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Cabernet Franc; 63% of the vines are old, and the young ones, 37%, stand at 5,500 to 7,800 to the hectare. Perron has been certified ISO 14001 since 2013, under the Bordeaux environmental management system, and organic since 2022, and it holds Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3. Beside the grand vin (the estate’s first wine) the family makes Château La Croix, first made in 2018, and Château Pierrefitte.

Château Perron La Fleur comes from the oldest vines on the estate, more than 70 years old on average, raised in truncated-cone wooden vats, half of them new. It is all Merlot today; the 2007 was 90%. The family’s ambition is set in stained glass on the property wall: “Nec Falerno Minor,” not lesser than Falernian, the most celebrated wine of ancient Rome. It is a bold claim for Lalande-de-Pomerol, and the kind of quiet confidence that makes the satellites of Pomerol worth watching. The 1998, which I tasted in May 2026, showed what time does here: softened tannins, evolved aromatics and the slow shift from fruit toward earth and cedar. That same month I put the Perron 2016 and 2017 side by side, a lesson in how Bordeaux records time: the 2016 speaking with confidence and scale, the 2017, from a year of spring frosts, with restraint.

At a glance

Appellation

Lalande-de-Pomerol

Commune

Lalande-de-Pomerol, beside the 12th-century church

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Massonie family, since 1958, in 3 generations

Vineyard

36.17 hectares; 63% old vines; the young at 5,500 to 7,800 vines a hectare

Soil

Sandy gravel over a subsoil of iron oxide Terroir of Lalande-de-Pomerol →

Grapes

Merlot 80%, Cabernet Sauvignon 10%, Cabernet Franc 10%

Farming

ISO 14001 since 2013; certified organic since 2022; Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3

Wines

Château Perron; Château Perron La Fleur, from vines of more than 70 years; Château La Croix, from 2018; Château Pierrefitte

In history

Au Peyron in the trade tables, 1868 to 1898, under the Nicolas family; medals at Paris, 1877 and 1878