{"title":"Chateau Grand-Puy Ducasse","description":"\u003cp\u003eGrand-Puy Ducasse is the odd one out among Pauillac's classified estates: its château doesn't sit among its vines but on the quay in the town of Pauillac, looking out over the Gironde, where the wine has been made for some two hundred years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe story starts in 1675, when Arnaud Ducasse bought a modest house on the riverbank, and the family held the estate for generations. Pierre Ducasse, a lawyer, assembled vineyard land across the commune, and his son built the riverside winery in 1820. Today the owner is CA Grands Crus, the wine arm of the Crédit Agricole bank, which launched a long improvement plan in 2004 that has brought a new vat room and new cellars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 40 hectares are a patchwork: gravel hillsides in the north for Cabernet Sauvignon, the historic plots of the Grand-Puy lieu-dit at the center, and sandier ground to the west better suited to Merlot. The vineyard is planted to roughly 59% Cabernet Sauvignon, 36% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot, and has been plowed rather than weeded with herbicides since 1996. The wine spends about 18 months in French oak, around 40% new.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eExpect Pauillac at its more elegant end: cassis, cedar and graphite with firm tannins that settle nicely with age.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[],"url":"https:\/\/nyc.flatiron-wines.com\/collections\/chateau-grand-puy-ducasse.oembed","provider":"Flatiron Wines \u0026 Spirits NYC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}