Château Pédesclaux
You can imagine the scene. Or at least I hope you can, because I wasn’t there, so we are going to have to imagine it together. We are in a very clean-and-clinical tasting room, all stainless steel sinks and white laminate worktops, somewhere in central London. Gathered together within this sanctuary are some of the great and the good of the Bordeaux-interested London-based wine scene, some of them Masters of Wine, all of them deeply familiar with what Bordeaux has to offer. The task in hand? A blind assessment of the 2005 Bordeaux vintage, all finished now, with only the labels to be revealed. The tasters had swirled and slurped their way through dozens of wines, and were now eager to see the identities of the five-star wines, an unprecedented 25 of them. Of these wines, only three were unanimously ranked as five stars by everybody present. The covers are slowly removed. Wine number one is revealed to be…….the 2005 from Mouton-Rothschild. Murmurs of appreciation fill the room. Wine number two is revealed to be…….the 2005 from Pichon-Baron. Sighs of mutual admiration can be heard. Maybe a back or two received a gentle pat. And now for the identity of wine number three…….the 2005 from Château Pédesclaux.
Huh……?! What…..? Pédesclaux?!
Yes, Château Pédesclaux, a little-known Pauillac fifth growth, was ranked alongside not only Mouton-Rothschild and Pichon-Baron but also the likes of Rauzan-Ségla, Margaux and a host of other top names; the unloved Château Pédesclaux wiped the floor with the likes of Latour and Lafite-Rothschild, both rated at less than five stars.
Sales of the 2005 vintage naturally went through the roof, and suddenly it seemed as though Château Pédesclaux had come of age. But where had this rarely-sighted estate come from, what was its story, and why the sudden success? Surely the château with the dubious honour of maintaining the lowest profile of all the classed growth estates in Pauillac couldn’t really be an unrecognised substitute for Château Mouton-Rothschild or Château Pichon-Baron, could it?
