Johannesburg Auction Week
Live Virtual Auction, 6 November 2022
Coats Family Cellar | Iconic Bordeaux
About the SessionThe Coats Family Cellar is arguably the most prestigious fine wine collection ever offered in South Africa. It contains a deep collection of the worlds finest, most sought-after wines, spanning over 150 years. Collected over many decades, the cellar was imported from Ireland to South Africa via reefer. Each bottle within the Coats Family Cellar was authenticated by Michael Egan in August 2022 and given an ID number for tracking.
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About this Item
Château Pavie is a Bordeaux estate in Saint-Émilion known for its Merlot-dominant grand vin. It is one of four châteaux with the Premier Grand Cru Classé A status, the highest classification in Bordeaux's right bank. The 37-hectare (91-acre) Pavie estate sits on a limestone plateau on a site known to have been planted with vines since Roman times. The current property boundaries were heavily influenced by the land purchases of Ferdinand Bouffard in the late 19th Century. Bouffard bought a number of vineyards and châteaux, laying the foundations not just for Pavie but several of its neighboring estates, although he continued to manage them as separate entities. In the early 20th Century, Château Pavie was divided into three: châteaux Pavie Macquin and Pavie Decesse were created from land from the original estate. Pavie remains the largest of the three and is one of the largest estates in Saint-Émilion. In the 2012 review of the Saint-Émillion classification, Château Pavie was elevated to the highest status of Premier Grand Cru Classé A.
Provenance
The Coats Family Cellar is arguably the most prestigious fine wine collection ever offered in South Africa. It contains a deep collection of the worlds finest, most sought-after wines, spanning over 150 years. Collected over many decades, the cellar was imported from Ireland to South Africa via reefer. Each bottle within the Coats Family Cellar was authenticated by Michael Egan in August 2022 and given an ID number for tracking.
Michael Egan is a world-expert in fine and rare wines with more than thirty five years of experience. He was the principal expert for the plaintiff in the two major wine counterfeiting trials in Koch v. Eric Greenberg and United States v. Rudy Kurniawan, both of which occurred in 2013.
Along with Michael Egan, the Strauss & Co Fine Wine team have tasted extensively through the cellar and are confident of the wine storage and hence quality. The entire collection is currently stored at Wine Cellar.
Critics Ratings
‘The 2000 Pavie was tasted on two occasions. The first was from bottle at the château, where I felt it was quite sauvage and displayed more brettanomyces than I remembered. It was a peculiar showing. Then I tasted a magnum back in the UK, and this chimed more with previous bottles. Blackberry and crème de cassis feature on the nose, which is precocious and modern in style, though the new oak that once dominated this Saint-Émilion is now subsumed. The palate is full-bodied and dense, yet it does possess an alluring, silky texture. A sweet, precocious finish lingers extremely long in the mouth.’ - Neal Martin, Vinous, 96/100 (Sept 2021)
‘Just beginning to come around and strut its enormous potential, this wine at age 15 has been evolving like a glacier. The wine has an inky, opaque, plum/purple color and a stunningly rich nose of mulberries, bramble berries, blackberries, licorice and incense as well as touches of toast and graphite. Fabulously concentrated and full-bodied, with a multidimensional mouthfeel, this profound Pavie is in mid-adolescence. It should evolve and continue to drink well for at least another 30-40 years. This is clearly the first compelling effort made by the Perse family.’ - Robert Parker, Wine Advocate, 100/100 (Aug 2015)