From: Pelan (NE of Saint-Émilion) Bordeaux, France
Blend: 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot

Taste: This will be much, much lighter than you might think given the vintage, and trust me, that means only good things. At 21 years old, this Bordeaux is delicious and easy to love. Plus, unlike other aged wines we've tasted, this wine still holds vibrant fruit alongside all of those wonderful tertiary notes without the harsh tannins 2003 bestowed on many a European winery. Combine that with the fact that the bottles have all been recorked before release, and that makes this little gem one of my favorite finds of 2023 and 2024. Tasting note: This classically styled dry red is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. This pristine library release offers finely aged, beautifully complex Bordeaux that harkens back to the winemaking style of yesteryear. Look for leather, fig, and espresso notes on top of an elegant, medium-weighted frame. On day 1, a sumptuous core of red fruits and kirsch unfurl from an initial nose of leather and coffee, and by day 3, caramel, licorice, fig, and even silkier tannins develop. It is an excellent value for its age and quality. A must-get while we have it!

Pairing: “For those of us who collect wine to drink as it ages, the rewards can be extraordinary and well worth the risk. A perfectly cellared bottle of wine develops such extraordinary nuances and flavours as it ages. Tannins and acidity soften, fruit integrates with the oak, and wonderful tertiary notes emerge that can only develop with age. Not all wines age gracefully, of course, but when you find the styles that do well over time, the experience can be ethereal.”

“Drinking those aged wines, however, can pose problems when pairing with food. Acidity and tannins are prime catalysts for successfully matching foods to wine. When acid loses its sharp edges and tannins soften, you are relying on subtle, albeit amazing, flavours when finding a perfect food mate with mature wines.”

While true, some of the classic pairings still work beautifully here, as long as you lean into layered flavors and avoid big, in-your-face flavors. Some examples to avoid include adding condiments such as ketchup, hot sauces, and large cuts of meat drenched in a sauce based in peppercorn. Roast rack of lamb (check out the recipe below, cut into smaller slices (eight instead of four), and please get it from your local butcher, not the supermarket— you’ll thank yourself later), venison, duck breast (confit/breast/rillette but thinly sliced), beef-based dishes (including steak tataki- delicious!) gratin dauphinoise, and mushrooms/truffles in pasta or risotto (our favorite pairing other than steak tataki or lamb).

Rosemary Rack of Lamb With Crushed Potatoes
By David Tanis

About this wine, in a nutshell. Closerie du Pelan was established by Regis Moro in 1984 and is the unique expression of grapes harvested in the Pelan “lieu-dit”, to the north-east of Saint-Émilion village. Our vines thrive here without fertiliser, weedkiller, or any other synthetic products, in an environment which fosters their healthy root growth and vigour. The identity of Closerie du Pelan is shaped by the native yeasts present in our berries, gentle extraction without inputs and ageing in used barrels. This non-fined wine is low in sulphur. As of 2022 the Amoreau family (Château le Puy) has partnered with the Moro family to revive the estate.

About this wine, in detail. Many thanks to importer Rosenthal Wine Merchant for all the following information. Back in 1984, a local named Régis Moro left his career as a painter and returned to his roots, purchasing a property called Vieux Château Champs de Mars which straddles the Côtes de Francs and Côtes de Castillon appellations.

Much has been made of Bordeaux’s wine crisis in recent years. The reasons behind the malaise are many, and too complex to fully explore here, but in effect: significantly more Bordeaux is produced per year than is consumed—a trend that has been charting for decades and which has come to a rolling boil as of late. This downturn has disproportionately affected the “value Bordeaux” sector—that ocean of wine sold as Bordeaux AOC and Bordeaux Supérieur, as well as those far-flung and little-understood appellations in the larger Côtes de Bordeaux—but its effects are felt nearly everywhere in the region…

Except, it would seem, with the Amoreau family. Owners of the legendary Château Le Puy for over 400 years, the Amoreaus stayed the course during Bordeaux’s shift in the late 20th century toward increased extraction, new oak, and technological interference, continuing as they always had to produce hauntingly pure wines from their biodynamic polyculture using a minimum of cellar interventions. Paradoxically, what perhaps felt old-fashioned in Robert Parker’s heyday eventually came to feel positively revolutionary, and while Le Puy has long had a devoted following at home, its export markets have blossomed as drinkers of a new stripe—hungry for wines of personality and naturalness—have had their minds blown by a style of Bordeaux they hadn’t even imagined possible.

Although the fortunes of many vignerons in this storied region are shrinking, the Amoreau family, alongside their visionary director of operations and co-owner Harold Langlais, have expanded their footprint in their corner of the Côtes de Bordeaux over the past decade. In 2012, they acquired Closerie Saint Roc—a property less than a kilometer from Le Puy with the same Asterie limestone bedrock—and today they produce several Bordeaux of riveting beauty there, all in the manner of Le Puy’s famous “Barthélémy,” vinified and bottled separately according to soil type.

The family’s most recent acquisition is a real doozy. Back in 1984, a local named Régis Moro left his career as a painter and returned to his roots, purchasing a property called Vieux Château Champs de Mars which straddles the Côtes de Francs and Côtes de Castillon appellations. An old friend of Jean-Pierre Amoreau, Régis similarly eschewed chemical treatments and modern gadgetry from the outset, obtaining organic certification with the 2008 vintage and biodynamic certification in 2013. While Moro’s star rose gradually on the home front—he was named “Winemaker of the Year” by the French newspaper Le Point in the early 2000s—large-scale commercial success eluded him. By the late-2010s, the winery was in mild disrepair, and the vineyards, still beautifully tended, were rife with missing vines, yielding a mere 15-20 hectoliters per hectare as a result. The Amoreaus saw an opportunity to help an old friend and to produce wine from a different terroir—the Moro vineyards have more sand and silt than Le Puy, with less of a reddish cast to the soil—and they bought the property in early 2022.

While an Amoreau-produced Pelan will not be released for several years—2022 will be the inaugural vintage—the purchase package of this fixer-upper included an incredible surprise: lurking below the cellar’s main floor was a host of older vintages, stored perfectly since their inception. And we’re not talking about a few bottles of this and that; these are proper stocks—many hundreds of bottles of wines of real character and charm that, symptomatic of Bordeaux’s troubles, simply never found a home—until today.

During our most recent visit with the team at Le Puy, we excitedly tasted through a near-unbroken vertical of Pelan vintages, from 2015 back to 1999, and the magnitude of this unexpected bounty revealed itself to us more and more with each passing bottle. While Pelan presents a bit more broad-shouldered—Moro employed traditional punch-downs, in contrast to Le Puy’s distinctive “infusion” method—a deep kinship is evident between Pelan and Le Puy’s flagship “Emilien” bottling. Pelan may not be quite as ethereal and seamless as Emilien, but in its vibrant fruit, its foregrounding of savory mineral elements, and its absence of flash and flab, it feels uncannily familiar; after all, the vineyards are a mere three kilometers south of Le Puy’s, and the wines were birthed in a similar spirit. Here, then, is the old, true, haunting style of Bordeaux that made the region famous, yet which is so rare to encounter these days.

Closerie de Pelan encompasses 42 total hectares, most of which—besides a small parcel of Sauvignon Blanc—are planted to roughly 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot, at altitudes of 50 to 80 meters. Soils here are variegated and diverse, with more sand and silt than at Le Puy, which is situated higher (100 meters and above) and contains a greater presence of Asterie limestone than Pelan. The Le Puy team is currently refurbishing the cellar and planting vines to fill in the rows’ many gaps, and they will, of course, continue the biodynamic farming Régis began over a decade ago. Régis’ son Sébastien is on board full-time at Pelan, working alongside Harold and the Amoreaus and helping continue his father’s legacy; his name will appear on the estate’s front labels as well.