Château Le Puy

The Free Bacchus Story

Le Puy sits on the same limestone plateau as Saint-Émilion, a few kilometres east, on the wrong side of an appellation line that was drawn for administrative reasons rather than geological ones.

The estate has never used synthetic chemicals. Not in the sense of a conversion that happened at some point and can be dated, but in the sense that the family running the property has farmed it continuously for generations and never adopted them when they arrived. That's a different thing from converting, and it's rarer.

They stopped using chemicals in 1924, which is to say before most agricultural chemicals existed and a lifetime before biodynamics reached Bordeaux. In 2017 they gave up the appellation as well, moving to the plainer Vin de France after concluding that the classification described something other than what they were doing.

The certification is Demeter biodynamic alongside Ecocert organic. Emilien, the main bottling, is a Merlot-led blend that ages considerably longer than its price would suggest, and it is one of the more persuasive arguments in Bordeaux that appellation prestige and wine quality are only loosely connected.