Château de Pez joins Star Wine List of the Year France – an end to 'Bordeaux-bashing'
Star Wine List is honoured to have partnered with Château de Pez for the first Best Bordeaux Wine List category at our wine list awards in France. This week, we welcomed CEO Frédéric Rouzaud and his team to Star Wine List of the Year France – our celebration of the country’s finest wine lists – and learned not just about the estate’s rich heritage but the challenges (and opportunities) for Bordeaux wines on lists across France.
Partner story with Château de Pez.
Saint-Estèphe winery Château de Pez dates back to 1452. It is formed of a 38-hectare vineyard block on the Left Bank of Bordeaux, surrounded by top classified growths, in Saint-Estèphe. The property belonged to the Pontac family for generations (also owners of Château Haut-Brion) before its acquisition by Jean-Claude Rouzaud in 1995. Now part of the Louis Roederer group and managed by the same team behind the second-classified growth Pichon Comtesse in Pauillac, it is helmed by CEO Frédéric Rouzaud along with winemaker Nicolas Glumineau.
The modus operandi of Château de Pez is to create wines that reflect its terroir with the same attention as a cru classé, and that will appeal to wine lovers of every creed – whether staunch Bordeaux drinkers or not.
The Best Bordeaux Wine List of France 2025 was awarded to Le Taillevent, in Paris, whose sommelier Paul Robineau (a newly certified Master Sommelier) noted the same ‘Bordeaux-bashing’ trend of which Frédéric also spoke on-stage. “I think there’s been some Bordeaux-bashing for some time,” said Frédéric, “and I think it’s time that changes. I think that Burgundy is good, when served with conviction, but Bordeaux can be a really good wine, also for its value, and so we’re very happy and proud to be here, so thank you for inviting us.”
Gold Star winner Paul put this into context: “You know, with the Bordeaux-bashing of the past 20 years Bordeaux has, I would say, a unique situation where people were going away to go to Burgundy or Rhône Valley or reserves; I think we have the chance to have great vintages of Bordeaux, and guide people through hundreds of vintages of Bordeaux.
“And the chance we have [as a team] is to be able to go to Bordeaux quite often, to the big châteaux of course, and also the newcomers. There are plenty of newcomers in Bordeaux, as in Loire Valley, Champagne and Burgundy, where you can find light, different styles of grape – more Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot. So Bordeaux is not only Cabernet and Merlot – you have a wide range of very different styles as well.”
Saint-Estèphe – but not as you know it
Château de Pez seeks to redefine the Saint-Estèphe style for the modern palate. That means moderating the tannin prevalence, enhancing fruit flavours, and creating wines that can be drunk in youth (as well as older).
“I think we need to stick with the freshness and the saltiness from the oceanic environment here in the Médoc,” explains Florent Genty, Commercial Director of Château de Pez. “We need to emphasise the mineral side, the lively and fleshy tannins from the limestone that we have in Saint-Estèphe, but not forget the silky, velvet texture coming from the Merlot planted on clay, and we need to really emphasise the ‘velvet glove in an iron hand’ nature of this wine without forgetting the place we’re from.”
Florent says that they make the wine more approachable by using vessels like wine globes and foudres, playing with smaller new oak proportions, lowering the temperature of vinification, and reducing the number of pump-overs to ensure a finer extraction. “We age our wines longer in oak barrels,” he says, “because it stretches the tannins. So we adapt our vinification and viticulture to make the wine more approachable.”
Château de Pez at Star Wine List of the Year France
Star Wine List of the Year is our celebration of the great wine lists of the world, and the teams who create them. Sponsors of these awards announce the finalists in their category, present the winners with their certificates, and treat all attendees to a tasting of their wines.
Florent told us why it was important for Château de Pez to be in this room, full of the country’s top sommeliers: “First, because we like to share wine at the restaurants, we like to share wines with people, with some sommeliers and some nice food pairings, so we think that Château de Pez has a key part to play in the food pairing – it’s a social beverage first. And secondly because Bordeaux is usually not the region that we like to highlight when we talk about sommeliers or food pairings and, step by step, we are coming back to Bordeaux.”
He attributes that to a focus on export causing Bordeaux, as a region, to have got “lost in translation with the sommeliers in France.” However, by concentrating on fruit expression over tannins, he hopes that sommeliers – and diners – can now be persuaded to choose the wines of Bordeaux, even in youth.
“I think we need to stick with the saltiness from the ocean side,” he says. “We need to stick with the chalky, lively and fleshy tannins from the limestone that we have in Saint-Estèphe, but we don’t have to forget the clay on the Merlot, and we need to really emphasise this – the liveliness and attention of our wine – without forgetting the place we’re from. So it’s really hard to adapt, but we are adapting our vinification and viticulture to make the wine more approachable.”
And what can people expect from a glass of Château de Pez?
“We’ve got the velvet texture from the Merlot planted on the clay, which can remind you of some Pomerol and the Cabernet Sauvignon planted on the gravel soils which will bring the minerality and umami notes we like in Saint-Estéphe. Our Cabernet can make the wine very precise, defined, salivating, with a little kick of tannic structure which highlights the spine of the wine.”
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