Le Bon Pasteur

The fate of Le Bon Pasteur is then closely connected to Michel Rolland who represents the spirit of the château for 40 years. Michel Rolland was born in 1947 on the edge of the Pomerol appellation. Steeped in nature, he spent his childhood and teenage years on the family property, Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol-Maillet. Perhaps this explains his love for the land in general and in particular for the vine.

After technical studies at schools of agriculture and viticulture, he was accepted into the Faculty of Oenology in Bordeaux. It’s then – in 1968 – that he met Dany, who was to become his wife. From that point forward, they stayed by one another’s side and pursued their career together.

In 1973, the couple associate with the owners of a lab in Libourne and that is where it all began. At the time, oenologists were more office practitioners than field professionals!

This was the time of modern wine’s infancy… Michel Rolland crisscrossed the region visiting the properties.

When his father Serge Rolland died in 1979, he took over, with his mother, the management of the homestead while he continued his work at the laboratory.

It is precisely in this family property he developed the recipes and techniques that have made it successful: search for the optimal maturity of the grapes, green harvesting, plot selections, sorting the grapes before and after destemming, whole grape vinification, pigeage extraction, use small tanks from 15-70 hectoliters, equipped with a thermal control system since 1987. An innovation in the appellation.

Every step has been considered and adopted from the vineyard to the bottling, everything has been designed to preserve the rich complexity of the different plots of Le Bon Pasteur.

Then in 1985, destiny knocked on his door: he was asked by some producers in California to study with them ways to maximize the potential of the region’s wines. His natural curiosity and his desire to expand his knowledge would outline his destiny…

This was the beginning of a life that would take him over four continents, to more than 150 properties in a dozen different countries. It will be a journey marked by extraordinary events, with different cultures, latitudes and, climates. An extraordinary professional and personal adventure! 

Of course, Dany was here to manage the laboratory and the properties.

Thanks to the know-how of experienced winemakers, Dany and Michel Rolland, Château Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol is an excellent wine unanimously praised by critics worldwide.

The Pomerol appellation encompasses a multitude of micro-terroirs. What makes Château Le Bon Pasteur, with a total surface area of 6.7 hectares, so unusual is that it is located on the border between two world-famous regions: Pomerol and Saint-Emilion. As opposed to the great châteaux of the Médoc, the vineyard is not in a single block, but spread out over 21 plots. This patchwork of terroirs accounts for the wine’s considerable complexity, deep colour and delicate bouquet, as well as a softness typical of Pomerol and a generous, powerful side reminiscent of Saint-Emilion.

Château Le Bon Pasteur’s wide range of different geological profiles includes clay-gravel and gravelly-sand, deep gravel, and a subsoil of sandy molasse or clay molasse (called molasse du Fronsadais) with traces of crasse de fer (ironpan). The complexity of these various terroirs is accentuated by the varying depth of topsoil, different sun exposure (south and southeast), as well as the gradient and type of subsoil that determine natural drainage. 

Each plot of vines has unique characteristics calling for tailor-made attention. The “Caillou” plot, planted entirely with Merlot and located 200 metres from Pétrus, is one of the key components of Le Bon Pasteur. The clay-gravel soil overlays a rare blue clay subsoil that is found only in Pomerol. Rich in iron, this terroir absorbs water when it rains, thus avoiding an excess supply to the roots. Conversely, during hot dry weather, the blue clay loosens and releases water to nourish the vine roots, even deep down. This naturally-regulated system enables the Merlot vines to produce wines that epitomise this variety’s intrinsic concentration, velvety texture, and great delicacy.

The “Pomerol Maillet” part of the vineyards features Cabernet Franc vines an average 40 years old. This variety is early-maturing here thanks to the clay-gravel-siliceous soil. This tendency towards early-ripening reduces the risk of rot during the rainy month of October in Bordeaux. The Cabernet Franc vines from this part of the vineyard produce fresh, spicy, and very fruity wines that are also balanced, structured, and show good ageing potential.

Other plots, poetically named “La Maugarde”, “Le Barrail”, “La Chichonne”, “Chantecaille”, and “Troque”, are also located in the hamlet of Maillet, which has no centre as such, but rather climats like in Burgundy. Our winemaking team takes great pains to adapt to each of these climats. Thanks to our technique of vinification intégrale (alcoholic fermentation in 225 litre barrels), we can target optimum ripeness down to the smallest parts of the vineyard.

At Château Le Bon Pasteur, we sometimes have to fill fermentation vats, even small ones, with grapes that we know have different potentials. So, for the past several years, we have been fermenting grapes in barrel – a truly artisanal technique – which showed us that we could produce wines with different characteristics even with grapes from the same plot, and then ferment them according to their exact profile. 

We needed two things to do this: the right equipment and the right people

We made sure to have both at Château Le Bon Pasteur in 2008.

We focused on separately fermenting wines from each specific part of the vineyard to obtain the best from each one in order to fine tune the final blend. 

Fermentation in barrel means that once the grapes have been sorted by hand, approximately 250 kg are put into barrel. This enables us to precisely adjust winemaking, to adapt to “plots within plots”, and to harvest even very small quantities of grapes – the top quality on a given day.

Whole grape fermentation and extraction are enhanced by turning the barrels manually. We carry out this, and all other winery operations, meticulously in order to achieve the results we are looking for. 

The wine is usually left on the skins for a long time: 25-30 days without moving the barrel whatsoever, and 40-60 days altogether. 

Fermentation takes place exclusively with indigenous yeast. 

The advantage of vinification intégrale is that fermentation is extremely well-focused and the fruit is handled in a gentle, totally non-mechanical way.

The disadvantage is that one ends up with a multitude of small lots. However, the challenge in blending is well worth the gain in quality.

Michel Rolland was born on a modest estate, but decided early on that this would be his universe. He was instinctively drawn to oenology in the late 1960s: a discipline that had been raised to the status of a major science by Emile Peynaud. He met his future wife while at university. This was the beginning of an unprecedented winemaking partnership. What is Michel Rolland’s secret? It can be summarised by an all-consuming desire to succeed and an extraordinary intuition. “When I started out, in my minuscule oenological laboratory in Libourne, château owners brought me samples of their wines after the vintage for analysis. I could have gone on in this way for quite some time, but what really interested me was why one wine seemed really promising while another had nowhere near the same potential”.

That realisation was a turning point, and motivated Michel Rolland to reflect and closely observe what transforms a grape crop into a great vintage. “I soon noticed that all great wines had common characteristics: low yields of concentrated grapes and a growing season with a perfect balance between sunshine and rain conducive to good ripening “. His credo was defined. Instead of leaving everything to chance, he saw what could be done throughout the growing season to achieve perfectly ripe fruit. When asked how you can tell when this has been achieved, Michel Rolland laughs: “That’s the whole mystery. In fact, the only way to know is to bite into the grapes”. 

Michel Rolland’s empirical method of making a difference before the grapes are picked began to find plenty of adepts. In the 1970s and 80s, Bordeaux was finding it difficult to recover from a major crisis. Michel Rolland continued his laboratory analyses and began offering advice to certain château owners who trusted him. This spurred him to seek other clients, speak with vineyard workers, survey vines, taste grapes, evaluate cellars, and ask in-depth questions about winemaking methods. His far-ranging experience enabled him to perfect techniques that lock in a wine’s intrinsic fruitiness and quality: green harvesting, leaf thinning, pinpointing ideal ripeness, saignée (bleeding juice from fermentation vats), extended maceration, increased fermentation temperature, and manual destemming. This was revolutionary at the time.

However, the results are there, and the wines that have taken advantage of his expertise are invariably improved. What are they like? Round, well-balanced, and immediately charming – epitomising Merlot’s joviality and sensuality – coupled with the austere and romantic side of Cabernet Sauvignon requiring years to shed its reserve and let its elegance shine. “Some of the most stupid and widespread comments I heard when I started out,” remarks Michel Rolland, “were from people going into rapture over a Bordeaux wine as follows: ‘What a wine! It will be outstanding in two years’, with this variation: ‘What a wine! We should have drunk it two years ago…’. I have always wanted wine to be good, whenever I choose to open it, and not to have to wait for it, or regret that I didn’t open it sooner… Regret and speculation are just an admission of helplessness”. That is how Michel Rolland’s consulting business stared out. It took off tremendously and became well and truly international thanks to Robert Parker’s influence on American wine lovers. Michel Rolland was soon asked to come to the US to advise the prestigious firm of Robert Mondavi in California. In Argentina, people call him El Guru and the government is grateful to him for having transformed the reputation of a drink fit for gauchos into that of a full-bodied, powerful wine that can vie with European counterparts. Today, Michel Rolland is the world’s most famous consulting oenologist, and the one receiving the most media attention. He has introduced his major innovations in Spain, Italy Portugal, Morocco, Chile, India, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, Hungary, Croatia, Israel, Armenia, Turkey, Switzerland, and China. 

This adventure is comparable to no other, and is inseparable from a place: Château Le Bon Pasteur.