Chateau Leoville Poyferre

​In 1855, Napoleon III decided to hold a Universal Exposition in Paris, a sort-of World’s Fair.  He wanted to exhibit the best wines in France, so he turned to the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce to arrange the exhibit.  What resulted is the selection of 58 wines as “cru classe”, broken down into five growths.  Only four were chosen for first growth (premiere cru):  Lafite Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, and Haut-Brion.  Of the 58 wineries involved, only one, Haut-Brion, did not come from the Medoc region of the left bank of Bordeaux.  Only one revision to the list has been made – Mouton Rothschild was upped from the top of the second growth to the first growth.  The list grew to 61 with the division of two of the wineries, one into three wineries and one split into two.
Near the top of the second growth list are three chateaus with Leoville in their names, so these were in the 1855 rating as one winery.  We had the pleasure of tasting at one of these three:  Chateau Leoville Poyferre.  Chateau Leoville Poyferre still shares part of the original chateau with one of the other two (see picture below -- they have the wing on the right).  By the way, Chateau Kirwan was listed at the top of the third growth list.

​Located in the St. Julien region of Medoc, Chateau Leoville Poyferre is the most technologically advanced winery I have visited, by far.  Basically, rather than sitting on their reputation and history, this winery has invested heavily in the quality of their product.  Nothing says this better than the machine shown below.  After using a vibratory system to destem them, the grapes are moved in lines through this system loaded with optical and laser devices that identify the grapes that are too small, have the wrong shape, show evidence of rot, or are the wrong color.  At the end of the short run, air jets shoot the grapes across a gap.  As they fly across this gap, a second air jet from above knocks the bad grapes out of the stream.  Pretty cool, huh?

​We tasted wines with three different labels, not uncommon for Bordeaux.  The true second growth wine, direct descendent of the 1855 wine, has the Chateau Leoville Poyferre label.  As seen in the picture of our tasting menu (specially made for Viking visitors), the other two labels are Chateau Moulin Riche and Pavillon de Leoville Poyferre.  Note the price difference.  All three are very good.  While the second growth wine was the best of the three, it should have been just on the basis of aging – a full ten years more than the Pavillon wine and eight on the Chateau Moulin.  I point this out because I did not find the Chateau Leoville Poyferre to be that much better than the Pavillon, maybe because of the higher Cabernet Sauvignon content.  I looked up the American prices for these two wines just for fun.  Turns out the price difference is not that great – $80 for the Pavillon and ~$105 for the Chateau Leoville.  I should add that the 2009 Chateau Leoville Poyferre retails for around $250….