70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon
Bordeaux, France
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A cuvée from a neighboring vineyard belonging to the Amoreau family, situated on the same astéries-limestone mother rock as those of the estate, but at a slightly lower altitude—80 meters above sea level compared to Le Puy’s 110 meters. The culture and the vinification are carried out by the Château le Puy team following the same approach: natural, organic and biodynamic.
Fermentation occurs with indigenous yeast, maturing in small, cement vats, bottled without filtration after 12 months. The aromatic bouquet reveals black fruit, plum and cherry, well balanced between its freshness and velvety tannins.
While the rest of Bordeaux was bulldozing and spraying their way to modernity after World War II, the Amoreau family kept doing what they'd done for 400 years: farming without chemicals. Just vines, draught horses, bees, and the kind of polyculture that makes true biodynamic farming possible.
This isn't your typical Bordeaux estate of endless vines. Le Puy maintains 150 acres of forests, fig trees, hazelnut groves, and beehives alongside their vineyards. Why? Because as Jean-Pierre Amoreau explains, “When you work in a monoculture, you end up with more parasites than predators. The wild areas have more predators. You have to have wild areas around the vines to maintain a balance.”
The Duc des Nauves comes from a neighboring vineyard the family acquired, sitting at 80 meters elevation on the same magical Astéries limestone that defines St.-Émilion's greatest sites. They farm it exactly like their home vineyard: horses instead of tractors to keep the soil alive and fluffy, indigenous yeasts only, no sulfur until bottling, no filtration, no manipulation.
The winemaking reads like a manifesto against modern Bordeaux: hand-harvested,
destemmed, fermented in small cement vats with wild yeasts, aged 12 months without any new oak influence or sulfur until bottling. As Harold Langlais, their associate winemaker, puts it: “We prefer infusion to extraction.”
The result? Wine that Jane Anson of Decanter called “revolutionary”: so different from their neighbors that they've actually applied to create their own single-vineyard, biodynamic appellation. Meanwhile, they bottle this as humble Vin de France because they refuse to follow the AOC rules that would compromise their principles.
