Collection: Ch Pape Clement

The estate of Château Pape Clément is part of the Pessac-Léognan appellation situated in the Graves viticultural area.

Based on a soil with exceptional components, the 60 hectares of this vineyard are devoted to the meeting of passion and work.

The Château terroir is situated on the oldest of the alluvial terraces, called the “Pyrenean gravel layer”. The originality of the Pape Clément site lies in the presence of a thin film of more recent Garonne gravel, deposited a million and a half years ago.

The diversity of the terroir of Pape Clément allows for the ripening of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot for the production of our red wine and Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris, Sémillon and Muscadelle for the production of our white wine.

Through its history, its character and its rooting in the terroir, the Château has developed a tradition making it possible to achieve excellence. This is the central point of the vineyard management as well as the major choices that have been made. Manual work in the vineyard, Guyot-Poussard pruning, animal traction, manual destemming, natural fermentation (indigenous yeasts), vinification in terracotta jars are some of the ancestral practices that let us reflect the best of our terroir.

Nevertheless, in order to continuously improve our practices to achieve excellence, innovation is a real driving force. The drone, the Green-Seeker, genodics, electric tractors, eco-confined spraying, self-steering tractors allow us to reconcile progress in technical, agronomic and environmental matters, and above all in quality. Investments have been made and the Château has been equipped with the most precise tools available to ensure the excellence of our practices.

Château Pape Clément is one of the only examples of such total enclosure in the Bordeaux conurbation. The particular characteristics of the urban environment have been mapped and explain today the strategic choices made at the Château. Ploughing by horse, electric tractors, biodynamic trials, eco-confined spraying for the most-sensitive plots; these are some of the advances in the protection of our terroir.

Château Pape Clément is part of the very small circle of châteaux certified as being of High Environmental Value. This HVE 3 certification is, according to the French state, the highest environmental distinction. Always seeking to deepen its responsible approach, continuous improvement with Terra Vitis allows the Château to identify points requiring attention and to provide solutions.

The grapes are harvested by hand, into crates of 10 to 12 kg. Our team of trained pickers performs an initial sorting on the vine, by selecting only the best bunches. The crop is then manually sorted in the cellar, on our sorting tables, to select only the grapes at optimal ripeness. 

About 5% of our best, freshly picked bunches are destemmed by hand. The individual berries are delicately detached from the bunch, without damaging their skin. The separated berries are then sorted by hand, put back in the crates, and taken to the vat room.

Our vat room was redesigned in 2007.  Here the vineyard is reproduced in the vats: there are 28 vats, each corresponding to plots of different ages and planted with different grape varieties. This reproduction of the vineyard in the vats is called “parcellisation”. It is all the more precise in our case, because the acquired knowledge of our vineyard allows us to blend or to separate the plots, to best respect the complexity of their micro-terroir.