1989 Chateau La Croix de Gay Chateau La Fleur de Gay, Pomerol

1989 Chateau La Croix de Gay Chateau La Fleur de Gay, Pomerol

Château La Fleur de Gay is a Bordeaux red wine made in the Pomerol appellation from old-vine plots on the property of Chateau La Croix de Gay. It was first produced as an individual wine in the early 1980s. For a few vintages it featured a little Cabernet Franc, but today the wine is 100 percent Merlot.

Rather than being an estate in its own right, La Fleur de Gay is consdered a sister-label of the La Croix de Gay site. The owners (the Raynaud-Lebreton family, who until 2011 also owned Château Faizeau in Montagne Saint-Émilion) view La Fleur de Gay as a “Grand Cru” wine and La Croix de Gay as a “Premier Cru”.

La Fleur de Gay itself is composed of fruit grown on three, old-vine sites across the Pomerol appellation. These are dubbed La Fleur (a clay-dense site neighboring Château Lafleur and Pétrus), Gay (a more gravelly clay zone close to the Croix de Gay château building) and Group (another clay-gravel site just outside the hamlet of Catusseau, immediately south of Trotanoy and Le Pin).

The hand-harvested fruit is fermented in two concrete vats, and aged in new French barriques for 18 months before bottling. Only around 1000 cases of La Fleur de Gay are produced each year.