Lalande-de-Pomerol

Vines arrived under Roman rule. From the twelfth century the vineyard grew around a commandery of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, later the Knights of Malta, who grew vines for mass and for crusaders and pilgrims on the way to Compostela. Their white eight-pointed cross is now the emblem of the appellation, and their twelfth-century Romanesque church still stands. On 18 February 1884 growers founded an association against phylloxera here, the basis of one of the Gironde's first winegrowers' unions. After phylloxera the grafting specialist A. Macquin, a pupil of the Montpellier school of agriculture, set up nurseries and a grafting school in the Libournais, and Merlot became dominant. The appellation was recognised by decree on 8 December 1936. The Confrérie des Baillis was founded in 1984.

The Barbanne stream separates Lalande-de-Pomerol from Pomerol to the south; Montagne-Saint-Émilion lies to the east. As at Pomerol, the Isle almost entirely removed the Tertiary limestone and left north-south terraces of material from the Massif Central. Néac lies largely on the high Günz terrace of sand, gravel and reddened pebbles over clay, with leached brown soils and brown soils on gravel and stones. Lalande-de-Pomerol sits mainly on the middle Riss terraces of sand, gravel and pebbles in a sandy-clay matrix: gravelly brown soils where the water table is deep and roots reach down several metres. The climate is temperate oceanic, with continental nuances in warmer summers and autumns.

The specification describes red wines of deep ruby or garnet colour, with small red and black fruit and sometimes violet, fleshy and ample without hardness, and marked by harmony, balance and elegance: charming when young, gaining power and complexity with age. Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec add structure and aroma. It credits clay in the subsoil with a closely regulated water supply, surface gravel that drains and reflects light onto the leaves, and iron oxides in the subsoil (crasse de fer). Merlot shows best on gravel with a clay matrix, and the Cabernets on the most gravelly soils.

Lalande-de-Pomerol is red only, from Lalande-de-Pomerol and Néac. The principal grapes are Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec; Carménère and Petit Verdot are accessory grapes, together at most 10 % of the planting. The rules require at least 5,500 vines per hectare, a base yield of 53 hl/ha and ageing until at least 15 March of the year after the harvest; waterlogged soils and frost-prone valley bottoms are excluded, and grassed field margins are compulsory. The Bordeaux wine council gives 1,131 ha and 143 growers; the specification gave 1,144 ha and 180 growers in 2009, mostly family holdings.