Wine Region: Bordeaux - France

Grapes: 82% Merlot, 18% Cabernet Franc

Tasting notes: 

Expert ratings: Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 94/100

'This dark ruby/plum Pomerol offers up sweet black cherry and blackcurrant fruit, velvety tannin, medium to full body, and a nice lushness and silkiness. A beauty with great fragrance and suppleness, it’s not enormously endowed, as a great vintage would be, but it is certainly an outstanding wine and a brilliant effort from ’Evangile in 2012. Drink it over the next 15 years.'

About the winery:

The estate was founded in the mid-18th century under the name of Fazilleau. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Léglise family, who had participated in the creation of the vineyard, sold it to a lawyer who renamed it L'Évangile. In 1862, it passed into the hands of Paul Chaperon, who built the chateau we know today, in the Second Empire style, and established the reputation of the vineyard: the second edition of Cocks & Féret (1868) mentions it as the first growth of Haut-Pomerol. It remained in the Chaperon family and in that of his heirs, the Ducasse, until 1990, when the estate was sold to Baron Eric de Rothschild.

Since 1990, Château L'Évangile has been owned by Baron Eric de Rothschild, who also owns Château Lafite in Pauillac, among others. His daughter Saskia, who was a correspondent for the New York Times in the Ivory Coast and author of a novel, joined her father in 2017. The estate has benefited for 30 years from significant investments and the technical expertise of the Domaines Barons de Rothschild (Lafite) teams. Juliette Couderc has been its COO since 2020, after looking after the vineyards of the Chinese estate Long Dai, which also belongs to the group. She works alongside the technical director Olivier Trégoat.

Beautifully located on the plateau of Pomerol between Petrus and Cheval Blanc, the 22 ha vineyard extends over varied soils of clay mixed with iron dross, clayey gravel and gravelly clayey silica. The vineyard is composed of Merlot (80%) and Cabernet Franc (20%), an intermediate proportion between those of Petrus (about 95% Merlot) and Cheval Blanc (only 43%). The average age of the vines is 30 years and the planting density is 6,000 vines/ha. The vines, managed on a parcel-by-parcel basis, are cultivated in a traditional and meticulous way, respecting the environment. The wines are aged for 18 months in oak barrels, 70% of which are new. In a purely qualitative approach, a second wine was created, Blason de L'Évangile, and a new vat room and underground cellar were put into service in 2004, to allow for strictly parcel-based vinification. First estate of the group to be converted to organic farming and certified in 2021.