Château du Puy 1997

While Japanese manga series ‘The Drops of God’ ¬– which tells the story of one man’s quest to discover the world’s greatest bottles – rocketed Château Le Puy to fame in 2009, remarkably little has changed at the estate in 400 years.

While many Bordeaux properties were drawn to chemical agriculture in the inter-war period, the Amoreau family have never used synthetic fertilizers or herbicides. A true pioneer of biodynamic farming and natural winemaking (long before the dogmas and manifestos), Le Puy is an oasis of biological diversity – for every hectare of vines, there’s another of hedgerows, figs, hazelnuts, and beehives.

Situated in Saint-Cibard, Le Puy’s vineyards share the same limestone plateau as neighbouring appellations, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol. Spicy and vivid, earthy and saline, Le Puy is reminiscent of the best Bordeaux of old.

(*Name changed from du Puy to Le Puy in 1999).