2010 Closerie du Pelan, Francs-Côtes-de-Bordeaux

Sometimes the best discoveries come from someone else’s challenges. When the Amoreau family—400-year owners of cult estate Château Le Puy—acquired Closerie de Pelan in 2022, they were buying a fixer-upper. The vineyards needed replanting, the cellar needed renovation, and original owner Régis Moro needed help after decades of critical acclaim but commercial struggle. What they didn’t expect was the treasure in the basement: a near-complete vertical of Pelan wines dating back to 1999, stored perfectly in the underground cellar. Not a few dusty bottles, but real stocks, hundreds of bottles deep, of biodynamic Bordeaux that simply never found its market. Régis Moro was kindred spirits with the Amoreaus. A painter turned vigneron who bought this 42-hectare property in 1984, he immediately eschewed chemicals and modern tricks. By 2008 he was certified organic; by 2013, biodynamic. The French newspaper Le Point once named him “Winemaker of the Year.” But in Bordeaux’s overcrowded market, acc