【Graves Grand Cru Classes】
【James Suckling 98】 【Jeb Dunnuck 97】
【Wine Advocate 96】【Vinous 96】
【Wine Spectator 96】【Decanter 96】
ZTF890A Chateau Pape Clement Rouge Pessac Leognan 2016
Special Price: $745/bottle
Region: France, Bordeuax, Pessac-Leognan
Grape varieties: 60% Merlot, 36% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Petit Verdot,1% Cabernet Franc
Alcohol content: 14%
Volume: 750ml
The quality maintains a consistent style, with excellent concentration and complexity, with obvious smoky and spicy flavors, rich wine aroma, elegant style, balanced structure, concentrated fruit aroma, complex and full, mellow and soft taste, intoxicating, delicate and long aftertaste.
【James Suckling 98】
Stunning concentration of perfectly ripe blackcurrants here with a delicate whiff of vanilla oak and extremely fine tannins that are almost perfectly integrated on the seductive and delicate palate, right through the almost literally breathtaking, super-long and very polished finish.
【Jeb Dunnuck 97】
The 2016 Château Pape Clément never failed to disappoint, offering a huge, powerful, full-bodied personality as well as beautiful notes of cassis, graphite, high-class cigar tobacco, asphalt, and graphite. About as sexy as it gets in the vintage, with silky tannins and loads of fruit, it’s perfectly balanced and has a great finish.
【Wine Advocate 96】
The 2016 Pape Clement has a deep garnet-purple color and quite a serious, earthy nose with truffles, tilled soil, underbrush and smoked meats over a cassis, baked plums and redcurrants core plus a touch of lavender. Medium to full-bodied, firm and grainy, the palate is built like a brick house, supporting muscular black fruit and earthy notions and finishing very long and mineral laced.
【Vinous 96】
The 2016 Pape-Clément has a more understated but quite compelling bouquet of blackberrywild strawberry, crushed stone and orange pith aromas. With aeration, it reveals impressivedelineation. The medium-bodied palate offers supple tannins. There is a core of licorice-tingedblack fruit, but l detect just a soupgon of greenness on the finish, as if one lot did not quiteachieve phenolic maturity. Hopefully that will be assimilated with bottle age.
【Wine Spectator 96】
This takes a slightly different tack than many of its Pessac colleagues, relying less on bramble and tar and more on alluring toast, with mocha, anise, wood spice and black tea notes draped liberally over the core of sappy kirsch and cherry preserve flavors. Plush and suave through the finish, though this needs a bit of time for the wood elements to be fully integrated with the fruit. For fans of the flashier, cashmere-textured style.
【Decanter 96】
Intriguing wine with an extra layer of aromatics. Floral, leafy, a touch herbal. Great purity allied with fresh acidity and integrated oak. A very fine Pessac. Robert Mathias: A brooding nose, coffee, cedar and dried tobacco. Broad structure with black cherry fruit. Tannins very fine, some warmth on the finish. Tim Triptree MW: Hedonistic aromatics of ripe black cherry, plum and blackberry, complex notes of smoke and cedar, leather, dried meats, tobacco and cinnamon spice. Opulent, ripe, great balance and length. Harmonious, age worthy Pessac.
【Pessac-Leognan Black Pope Winery】
The Pape Clement vineyard covers an area of 32.5 hectares, of which only 2.5 hectares produce white grape varieties. The soil here is composed of gravel, clay and sand, and the soil contains limestone. Since Bernard Magrez took over the management of the winery, the production of white wine has more than doubled. It is worth noting that before Bernard Magrez, Pape Clement Blanc was not sold to the public and was only consumed privately by the owners. In addition, starting from the 2013 vintage, Pape Clement began using drones in the vineyard to help monitor each plot and vines. Since Pape Clément Blanc received 100 points from James Suckling and Robert Parker in 2009, Pape Clement Blanc has maintained its status as the king of Pessac-Leognan white wine, and 2020 is the year with the highest score since 2009.
[The origin and meaning behind the golden key]
According to legend, Jesus gave Saint Peter, one of his twelve disciples, two keys, one gold and one silver, symbolizing that he had given him all rights in heaven and on earth. After Clermont V started his clerical career and became archbishop, he also used the two keys symbolizing the supreme authority of the Pope as the Castle of Clement Pope that he founded. Most of Bernard Magrez's wineries commemorate the shadow of Pope V. The most well-known classified winery, Chateau Pape Clement, is named after Le Pape Clement V. The double key pattern has also become the symbolic logo of its winery brand. If you see the signature "Bernard Magrez" on the wine label, it means the strictest quality assurance and the sharing of his passion and persistence in wine for half a century.
Chateau Pape Clement is located in the Pessac-Leognan region of Graves, Bordeaux, France. The winery was selected as the Grand Cru Classe de Graves for its outstanding red wine and produces very high-quality white wine.
Black Pape is one of the oldest Chateaus in Bordeaux. In 1299, Pope Boniface VIII appointed Bertrand de Goth Archbishop of Bordeaux. In the same year, Bertrand Guess received a vineyard named "Mothe" as a gift from his tenure. According to diocese archives at the time, Bertrand Guess loved the vineyard very much and during his several years in the Diocese of Bordeaux, he had been seeking the most rational and efficient way to manage the vineyard and cellar. In 1305, Bertrand Guess was elected as the new pope and was renamed Pope Clement V, from which the name of the Black Pope came. When he was about to leave Bordeaux, he chose to hand over the estate to his successors as Archbishop of Bordeaux. This inheritance between successive bishops continued until the eve of the French Revolution.
