The new Château Le Pin winery facilities should allow for greater “precision” for their first harvest

The cellar includes seven vats with a capacity of 15 to 42 hectoliters which allow the small Pomerol property to carry out an extremely strict selection on its plots for the 2011 vintage.

Wine expert Fiona Morrison, who is married to Château Le Pin owner Jacques Thienpont, told The Drinks business that the new cellar has given the famous estate “the luxury of being able to divide 2.7 hectares into seven lots”.

Thus, Morrison is sure to “[find] more precision and detail than ever before. »

“We expect the best facets of the vineyard to stand out, as well as the not so good. We are embarking on a journey, not sure where it will take us,” she added.

In addition, according to her, the new cellar (see photo), designed by Belgian architect Paul Robbrecht of Robbrecht & Daem, gave them more work space.

"You can do the reassembly without banging your head on the ceiling," she joked.

She briefly explained that the new cellar was "more efficient, easier to maintain and more spacious", while insisting that the building was "nothing revolutionary".

“We get so little involved in the production; it's nothing hugely innovative, it just gains a bit of professionalism,” she said.

From an aesthetic point of view, the building was designed to be “simple and elegant”; the finish is made of local stones filled with concrete.

“We wanted something that floats above the vines, but not commanding,” she added. About the vintage, she said: “2011 brought us back to reality after two years of impossible not to make a good wine. »

“Our luck in Pomerol is that the grapes are ripening early and the weather has been wonderful so we are not affected by mould,” she added.

However, she pointed to the fact that a three-step selection process was needed for the first time at Pomerol. The pickers had to carry out a preliminary selection in the vines before that, more usual for Château Le Pin, on the sorting tables in the vineyard and in the cellar.

The aim was to reject grapes that had not fully ripened due to the “unstable” climatic conditions during veraison. However, according to her, the production of Château Le Pin will be similar to that of last year.

Source: Patrick Schmitt
The Drinks Business
September 22, 2011