“One Fine Wine” is an occasional series of posts about wines I’ve enjoyed recently.
Château Les Ormes de Pez (you pronounce the z, so it unfortunately sounds like a tiny candy) is a long-time favorite of Diane’s and mine: It’s one of the wines we learned on, so to speak. This 2001 is from a half case that I squirreled away years ago and have managed to keep my hands off until now. And boy, am I happy I did!
The estate is an ancient one, now owned (since WW II) by the Cazes family, proprietors of the far more prestigious Lynch Bages. Les Ormes de Pez is classified as a cru bourgeois, and still occupies pretty much the same land it did when the famous 1855 classification relegated it to that lowly rank. As a consequence, it has never had the cachet – or the price – of the collector’s darling premiers crus Bordeaux. So much the better for us simple drinkers: de Pez has consistently produced fine wines, completely characteristic of the St. Estèphe appellation.
Especially in the hands of the Cazes family, the wine routinely achieves a quality level that, in my opinion, deserves a much higher ranking. (If de Pez got it, that would probably drive its price up, so let it continue to under-rank and overachieve, I say.) Its name no longer suits it either: The glorious grove of elm trees – les ormes — that identified it has long since gone the way of the buffalo – or, more accurately, the way of all European (and a good many American) elm trees, wiped out by a blight.
The wine endures the passage of time better than the estate’s rank and name. My bottle of 2001, after suffering in my far-less-than-ideal storage conditions, was nevertheless just lovely. A very deep garnet color; an earthy, black currant nose; deep, evolved flavors of underbrush, mushrooms, and black fruits; soft but still perceptible tannins; big and round (surprisingly big: I had not expected so substantial a mouthful); long, long finishing: To my palate this was classic St. Estèphe, mature and elegant and still very much alive, a wine of great equipoise and balance. That’s what I go to the great Bordeaux for, and that’s what Les Ormes de Pez of 15-25 years of age always gives me.
Feret’s Bordeaux and Its Wines (known as the Bible of Bordeaux: my edition is the 13th) says that the winemaking at Les Ormes de Pez is handled by the team that oversees Lynch-Bages with “the same attentive care which helps produce wines with bouquet, mellow and rich in flavor, consistent with the traditional quality of great Saint-Estèphes.” Amen.
Tom's Wine Line 