{"product_id":"chateau-pape-clement-rouge-1993","title":"Chateau Pape Clement Rouge 1993","description":"\u003ch1\u003eChateau Pape Clement Rouge 1993\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe exact vintage Bernard Magrez brought in Michel Rolland — a 30-year-old bottle of Pessac-Léognan's oldest estate at a hinge moment in its history.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGrape varietal \u0026amp; region\u003c\/strong\u003e: A Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot-led blend from Château Pape Clément, Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux — Cru Classé de Graves under the 1959 classification and the oldest wine estate in the region, with its first recorded harvest in 1252. The vineyard was gifted to Bertrand de Goth, later elected Pope Clement V in 1305, who farmed it himself before handing it to the Archbishops of Bordeaux, who held it until the Revolution. It sits on Pessac's signature terroir of gravel, clay and sand over sandstone and limestone, with unusually heavy clay deposits in its eastern reaches — Merlot goes into the clay, Cabernet Sauvignon into the gravel, right next door to neighbour Château Haut-Brion. Bernard Magrez became sole owner in 1980 and, in 1993 itself, brought in Michel Rolland as consulting winemaker — the year this bottle was made is the year the estate's modern era properly began.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTaste profile\u003c\/strong\u003e: honest, careful. 1993 was a difficult Bordeaux vintage — a wet September pushed back an already marginal season, and the wines that came out of it are lighter and more delicate than a typical Pape Clément, built to be drunk rather than cellared for decades. At over thirty years old, expect a wine well into its tertiary stage: dried cherry and plum rather than fresh fruit, leather, tobacco leaf, forest floor, and a savoury, faintly smoky thread that's Pape Clément's calling card in any vintage, with tannins long since softened into something silky rather than structured. Not a wine to chase power in — more a glimpse of a good Bordeaux estate at a lighter vintage, three decades on. Good with roast lamb or an aged hard cheese.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinemaking process\u003c\/strong\u003e: no vintage-specific technical sheet survives publicly for the 1993, so treat this as the house style Pape Clément has followed across the Magrez era rather than a confirmed spec for this exact bottle: hand-harvested, fermented and aged in French oak, with the blend built from parcel-by-parcel selection. Merlot tends to outperform Cabernet Sauvignon in cooler, wetter vintages like 1993, so this bottle likely leaned more heavily on Merlot than Pape Clément's more Cabernet-forward vintages do today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinemaker\u003c\/strong\u003e: Bernard Magrez bought his first sliver of Pape Clément — just 4% of the estate — on borrowed money, and became sole owner in 1980. By 1993, with the estate's reputation still rebuilding, he made the call that would define its next three decades: bringing in Michel Rolland, Bordeaux's most influential consulting winemaker. It's a case of a château catching a wave right as the tide turned — Pape Clément entered a long stretch of increasingly serious wine in the years that followed, built on lower yields, riper picking and stricter selection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chateau Pape Clement","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43091278889058,"sku":null,"price":304.0,"currency_code":"SGD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0552\/1339\/1970\/files\/PapeClement-Rouge1993.png?v=1783561113","url":"https:\/\/boundbywine.com\/products\/chateau-pape-clement-rouge-1993","provider":"BoundbyWine","version":"1.0","type":"link"}