Clos L’Église: Vineyards
The domaine is located fairly high up on the plateau of Pomerol, not quite as central as Château Lafleur or Petrus (assuming we take that ‘button’ of blue smectite clay as the ‘centre’), but it lies less than one kilometre to the west, so a good position. The château sits just off the Route de Saint Jacques de Compostelle, and as I indicated in my introduction it sits directly adjacent to Château L’Église-Clinet. Other near neighbours obviously include Château Clinet and Château Gombaude Guillot on the south side, the Clos L’Église vines running right around the former, and Château Rouget on the north side, on the more sandy slope that runs down towards the Barbanne.
Today there remain approximately (rounding up!) 6 hectares of vineyard at Clos L’Église, comprising the 4 hectares that Jean Rouchut and Thérèze Laval started out with, along with 2 hectares planted in 1978 by the Moreau brothers. The area available for vines is, to be precise, is 5.89 hectares, although this has been pushed down to 4.37 hectares from the 2022 vintage onwards, following the uprooting of 1.53 hectares of Merlot from the lower slopes of the vineyard.
The vineyard at the time Hélène and family took possession was 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, both figures increased since the Moreau era who had 70% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc. During their time the remaining 20% was dedicated to Cabernet Sauvignon, which has long since ripped up and replaced with the other varieties (as for the Malbec that constituted one-third of the vineyard at the end of the 19th century, this has long gone).
