90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc

Food pairings: Duck breast, entrecôte bordelaise with shallots, grilled beef, roast veal with porcini sauce, pheasant, wild mushroom gratin and other earthy mushroom dishes, roasted root vegetables, and cheeses such as Saint-Nectaire or 18-month Comté.

Winemaking: The 2022 was picked from September 8 to 23. After a spring frost scare kept in check by late pruning, then a dry spring and a scorching summer, the vines adapted well and the wines kept both freshness and roundness. The wine was aged in oak barrels, only about 10% of them new.

Vineyards and terroir: Fugue de Nénin comes from vines on sandy-clay soils in the eastern part of the estate, which give a wine that is ready to drink sooner, together with young vines on the Pomerol plateau. By Pomerol standards Nénin is a large estate, so its vineyard covers the full range of the appellation's soils: Oligocene deposits topped with alluvial gravels from the Dordogne, clays and siliceous gravels, quartz, granite, iron-rich "crasse de fer" and basalt pebbles.

Family and history: Château Nénin belonged to the Despujol family from 1847 until 1997, when, on the eve of that year's harvest, their cousin Jean-Hubert Delon of Château Léoville Las Cases bought it. The Delons drained the land, replanted the vineyard, built a new vat room and extended and refitted the cellars. Fugue de Nénin was created the same year as the estate's second wine. Its name comes from music: a fugue repeats the main theme, here the grand vin, in its own charming and earlier-drinking way.

In the pictures: An early-1900s postcard of Château Nénin, "1er cru Pomerol" (anonymous, public domain), and vines in front of the Saint-Jean church of Pomerol (photo: Jb.bourotte, 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0).