2018 Chateau Rouget Pomerol Bordeaux 750 ml

It should be impossible for an elite estate to get overlooked in a place like Pomerol.

The village is arguably Bordeaux’s toniest, full of names like Petrus, Lafleur, and Le Pin. Plus, Pomerol is tiny—not even 5% the size of Napa. Nothing could possibly slip through the cracks.

Right?

Wrong. It is possible. Case in point: Château Rouget.

In the 19th century, Rouget was ranked as one of the top five wines in Pomerol, which won’t come as a surprise to anyone who looks at a map: Le Pin and Trotanoy border one of the estate’s vineyards, while Clinet and Le Gay are a stone’s throw from the other. But the location was no match for a century of neglect, and Rouget’s price plummeted.

However, the current ownership poured in money and expertise, and they’ve pushed the wine’s quality as high as it’s ever been. Rouget now stands proud with Pomerol’s blue-chip bottles. 

When winemaker Edouard Labruyère’s father Jean-Pierre, first laid eyes on the Rouget estate in the 1990s he immediately fell in love with it “for the challenge of waking up a sleeping beauty,” as Edouard put it. In the intervening decades, he and his father brought in Bordeaux legend and 100-point icon Michel Rolland to oversee the winemaking and modernized the cellars as well. 

Both Edouard and his father placed the health and quality of the vineyards at the center of their push to restore the estate to its former glory, including a transition to biodynamic viticulture. “I was committed to cultivating my 40 acres as a gardener,” Edouard told us.