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Chateau Pavie on a beautiful
late-September day.
 

update from James Dove

Since posting this piece on my site, I have received a great deal of email from both friends and individuals I've neither met nor conversed with in the past.  With almost no exceptions, readers appreciated what they perceived to be a balanced and unbiased presentation of the facts that I witnessed.  And, I stand by what I have written without hesitation.

That said, a friend emailed me from France suggesting that I communicate several important points that I had made in our previous discussion on this topic which were not originally included.  As I have the deepest respect for my friend, I would like to add the following comments, and a couple of new thoughts:

(1)  I have no information whatsoever to suggest that the grapes that I photographed, while in my judgment representative of what was available to be seen in the three separate areas specified in the piece, made it into any finished wine at Pavie.  It is my understanding that Pavie performs rigorous sorting and that Gerard Perse goes to great lengths to make the highest quality of wine possible (per his standard).  It is entirely possible that such grapes -- while perhaps dominating the areas I walked through -- would ultimately be discarded.

(2)  It is important to avoid pre-judging a wine like Pavie on any basis.  I believe one should always focus on the critical question:  do I enjoy this wine?  The wines of Gerard Perse, and Château Pavie specifically, deserve acclaim or condemnation based only on objective and unbiased personal experiences.  What's in the glass, as long as it remains first and foremost a product of man and not science, trumps all else. 

Château Pavie is the subject of the respect and admiration of countless wine lovers the world over.  Msr. Perse should be applauded for his wine's good fortune with Mr. Parker, the Grand Jury Eurpoean, and in countless tastings, both blind and unblind, held across the world.  On the basis of these successes alone, Pavie deserves to be considered among the great wines produced today.

All that said, Bordeaux lovers deserve an understanding, if they desire it, of the source of such a wine's uniqueness.   In the case of Château Pavie, I ask these simple questions:   (1)  what makes Pavie so singular among its peers?  (2)  are there systemic processes in place at Pavie to create the conditions described by my photographs -- and, (3) if so, does this place Pavie on the leading edge of a new 'class' of Bordeaux wine -- one that is made in a fundamentally different way than its neighbors?  -- forget good or bad, right or wrong -- this is not the point.

In our shared love of wine, such questions should remain fair game.

Respectfully...
 

to the original report...

- BordeauxNut
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