Chateau de Chambrun Lalande de Pomerol Le Bourg 2018

Fancy drinking the wine of Petrus's neighbour for one 40th of the price? It's not often that you hear of new discoveries or hidden gems in Bordeaux. The degree of attention and dissection given to the most famous wine region in the world means that all the top wines have already been discovered, and cost hundreds and even thousands of pounds. We thought that was true, until we discovered Le Bourg. Le Bourg is a tiny, 2-acre, gem of a vineyard belonging to the seriously up and coming Chateau de Moncets-Chambrun. In the past the wines made from this special parcel were blended into the main cuvee, however in 2009 the owners felt the quality from there was too good not to be showcased on its own. It is easy to understand why. This miniscule plot, which only creates 600 bottles (in a good year), is planted with 45 year old low yielding Merlot vines, on a gentle southerly facing slope, composed of silty loam with a blue clay subsoil. Amazingly the same band of blue clay stretches under the small Barbonne stream (which separates Pomerol from Lalande de Pomerol) and pops back up in the vineyards of the famous Chateau Petrus, only a few hundred yards away. It is understood that this unique soil is ideal for Merlot and is the magic key to what makes Petrus so complex and extraordinary. Petrus is also the only chateau to have this type of soil in Pomerol.