Pavillon Rouge

Pavillon Rouge is Château Margaux's second wine, and by the estate's account the oldest second wine in the Médoc - made since the 17th century, carrying this name since the 1906 vintage. It comes off the estate's own emblematic plots, from vines mostly of an age with those that feed the Grand Vin, and is made by the same team.

A 1985 is a very different wine from a Pavillon Rouge of today, and the estate says so itself. Writing about the 2012, which took barely 30% of the harvest, it noted that "thirty years ago, this entire lot would have become Château Margaux", and that "the Pavillon Rouge of that time is now what has become the third and fourth wines". Thirty years before 2012 lands squarely on this bottle's era: what went into a mid-1980s Pavillon is material that would not clear the bar for the second wine now. For scale, the modern cuvée runs at roughly 75 to 80% Cabernet Sauvignon with 15 to 20% Merlot and a little Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, around twenty months in barrel with close to 60% of it new, and took 28% of the crop in 2025. No blend or alcohol figure was ever published for the 1985.

The season was slow to start and then very generous: a cool, late spring, then September and October both hot and dry, with leaves that "refused to fall until late into November" - an Indian summer the estate says will be remembered a long time. Picking began on 26 September. Reassessing the wine in February 2025, the estate placed it firmly in its drinking window, with probably little to be gained from waiting longer.