Château Pichon-Longueville Baron Winery Guide

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In the Pauillac wine region, beautiful Deuxième Cru (Second Growth) Château Pichon-Longueville is one of Bordeaux’s finest estates and the poster child for superlative claret. The wines are powerful, virile, structured, and long-lived. Dominating the region with its architecturally splendid fairy tale Château, Pichon-Longueville’s star talking point is the bold, baroque winery, which is floodlit at night, giving first-time visitors to the area a wonderful sense of the estate’s theatricality and importance. Pichon-Longueville – renamed from Pichon Baron – has enjoyed a remarkable history in Bordeaux and has lived through prosperous and more challenging times like so many of its neighbors.

Today, the wines of this renowned estate are justly celebrated. However, this was not always the case. Before the 1860s, the estate was joined with its twin property Pichon-Lalande, founded by the same family. However, the estate was divided into two following its owner’s death, Joseph de Pichon-Longueville, and subsequently his son, Raoul. After that, the fortunes of Longueville would slide when it was sold to the Boutellier family in 1933. Bertrand Boutellier, who inherited the property from his father Jean, showed little enthusiasm for producing fine Bordeaux, nor was he disposed to making an essential investment into the Châteaux. The wine quality slipped, and loyal customers slowly turned away.

The property’s return to splendor occurred in the late 1980s when the family sold Longueville to the AXA Millsimes insurance firm. The company director, Jean-Michel Cazes, and his winemaker friend Daniel Llose soon began an incredible program of improvements and restoration to this historical Château. Motivated by their desire to return Pichon to its former glory, they purchased new vineyards in superior sites. They commissioned the creation of the existing modern winery, designed by Patrick Dillon and Jean de Gastines. But most importantly, a massive investment was made into understanding the Longueville terroir, its best vineyard plots, in addition to modern winemaking techniques and only the finest French oak. The results speak for themselves: Pichon Longueville is now quintessential top-notch Paulliac, muscular, powerful, and concentrated wine of real ‘breeding.’ It is also very much a wine built to last; there is never any rush to drink Pichon from a good vintage, and great years seem to last for many decades – indeed, a fitting icon for the fine work.