Château L’Enclos: Vineyards
The estate is located to the west of the RN89, which runs along the foot of the Pomerol terraces. On the lower terraces to the east of the road, and continuing on the side to the west, the gravelly soils are gradually covered and finally give way completely to more sandy soils. The soils around Château L’Enclos are this dominated by sand. The château is located in the hamlet of Le Grand Moulinet, which lies very close to the hamlet of René, just to the west. Near neighbours in this locale include Clos René, as well as Château Moulinet, one of the Péré-Vergé domaines.
Looking back twenty or so years the older texts describe the estate as having 9.5 hectares of vines, distributed across as many as 38 parcels. Little appears to have changed now; the vineyard today amounts to a little less than 9 hectares, and remains very parcellated. Although there are many vines down here on the sandy soils of Moulinet, take a short drive up onto the plateau of Pomerol, especially near the school close to Château Clinet, Château Trotanoy and Chateau Gombaude-Guillot, and you will soon discover a number of vineyard markers indicating that the domaine also has vines on these more desirable soils. Coates writes that Larroucaud donated land to the community for the construction of the school in Pomerol, and claims that these plots on the plateau were given to him in exchange for this.
