On Valentine’s day at a Radisson Collection hotel Belgrade, we had a great time experiencing fantastic French wines from Château Gruaud Larose.

Le Chateau Gruaud Larose produces high-class quality wines over decades, and today,  Château was entirely restored and the gardens are redesigned also for its wine-tourism activities.
Mixing the new techniques with a strong tradition, today, Château Gruaud Larose is the leader in the region of the wine industry.

With an 82ha vineyard with high-quality organic soil, Château Gruaud Larose produces over 400.000 Bottles of wine per year.
Here, it is the poverty of the soil that lies at the origin of the greatest crus, a soil made
up of humus, clay, sand, and pebbles abandoned by the river.
The subsoil is red, yellow or blue clay, followed by sand and still more round stones,
coming from the Pyrenean diluvium.
The 82 contiguous hectares making up the Gruaud Larose vineyard are covered
mostly by Cabernet Sauvignon (60%), planted on gravel, along with Merlot (30%),
growing on chalky clay soil, along with Cabernet Franc (7%) and a hint of Petit
Verdot (3%).
The high percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon, the signature of great Medoc wines, provides power, structure and complexity, while Merlot and Cabernet Franc add greater suppleness and charm. Château Gruaud Larose is all about balance and, so as to reach the finest expression of this soil, Jean Merlaut has set up a large-scale vine-pul-
ling scheme. As a result, over the past few years, 40% of the vines have grubbed up, at an average of 2 hectares a year.

Jean Merlaut has also decided to conduct a cutting-edge replanting and vine-population policy which will, in the long term, pro-
vide even more exceptional wines.

While the oldest Gruaud Larose vines are almost a hundred years old, their average
age is about forty. Their roots are deep, sometimes as much as 7 or 8 meters, reaching
geological layers which are the vineyard’s buried treasures.
Château Gruaud Larose
was one of the first chateaux to eliminate insecticides, pesticides and
herbicides from its vineyard, and adopt manual or mechanical means to
replace chemical techniques.
Years of experience added to the considerable investments made in the winery have
allowed Gruaud Larose to adopt extremely modern winemaking techniques so as to
reach perfection.
Château Gruaud Larose has an underground storehouse,
designed by the architect Bernard Mazières, where
the great wines are aged for 15 to 18 months in over
1,300 casks of French oak. They are meticulously laid
out in this underground ‘cloister’ with its ‘ascetic’
architectural beauty.
The winemaking is finalized by a judicious blending of the
four grapes.
Before the bottling process, splicing and filtering are
carried out according to the characteristics of each
vintage.
The Gruaud Larose style is characterized by its finesse and its elegance, but also by
its power hidden in the entrails of its wines, thus telling of the beauty of its soil. The
Gruaud Larose style has evolved, with the most recent vintages playing more the card
of elegance and finesse. Its wines offer an abundance of fruits, oak, and spicy notes.

In the depths of the storehouse lies a wine collection, a little museum
full of inestimable treasures, concealing some exceptional old vintages.
It is a delight to plunge into the past, reaching back to 1815, the date of
the oldest surviving vintage (just two are left), or else to discover such
great vintages as 1961, 1982, 1986 or 1989… whose ability to resist the
passing of time displays the greatness of the wines of Château Gruaud
Larose.