History
The history of Clos des Papes harks back to the 17th century. Even then, the Avril family was famous in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Several members of this family were municipal consuls and treasurers between 1756 and 1790. This period is immortalized on a stone plaque on the city wall near the palace. In 1896, Paul-Vincent Avril’s grandfather Paul Avril sold red and white wines for the first time under the label Clos des Papes, which was officially registered on September 4, 1902. Paul Avril was one of the pioneers for the founding of the “appélation controllé Châteauneuf-du-Pape“ – which was also the first in France. Even then, Clos des Papes was widely known. Paul-Vincent’s grandfather Régis Avril (1901-1987) supplied the Elysée Palace, the residence of France’s Presidents, during the time of de Gaulle and Pompidou. Paul Avril took over the winery in 1963; his son Paul-Vincent Jr. joined his father in 1987, and is still responsible for the business today.
Paul-Vincent Jr., born in 1965, left Châteauneuf-du-Pape at the age of 16, but came back in 1987 after finishing his studies including five years of enology in Burgundy – where, he says, he learned something about the finesse and elegance of wine – and at the Economic College of Paris, where he acquired the necessary knowledge of marketing. He had his practical training in Australia and at Château Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux, where he was introduced to the art of high-tech winemaking. Back in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, he started making well-balanced, fresh and elegant wine with no recognizable taste of alcohol – quite in the Burgundian style. He also came to the conclusion that the method of mixing Grenache grapes with other varieties in order to obtain longer aging potential is definitively right and leads to success. Besides, he believes, a more complete and complex wine results from this. He gradually introduced such further innovations as smaller yields, removing the stems from the grapes, and leaving the wine unfiltered. During the early years of his career as a winemaker, he also experimented with such things as young oak for the aging of white wine, but was dissatisfied with the result. He preferred the freshness of wine without oak.