page_title: Pomerol AOC
section_title: Vineyard soils
hierarchical_section_title: Pomerol AOC / Geography / Vineyard soils
caption_attribution_description: Vineyards of Pomerol winery Château Gazin located in the right bank of the French wine region of Bordeaux.
context_page_description: Pomerol is a French wine-growing commune and Appellation d'origine contrôlée within the Libournais in Bordeaux. The wine produced here is predominately from Merlot with Cabernet Franc playing a supporting role. Unlike most other Bordeaux communes, there is no real village of Pomerol, although there is a church. The houses are set among the vineyards.
  The region was recognized as a distinct wine region apart from Saint-Émilion and the greater Libournais region by the French government in 1923 and was granted AOC status in 1936 as part of the first wave of AOC establishments by the Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité. While it is now one of the most prestigious of the Bordeaux AOCs, this situation is relatively recent, dating to the second half of the twentieth century, which is often given as one of the reasons why Pomerol is not included in any of the Bordeaux classifications.
  Pomerol is the smallest of the major fine wine regions in Bordeaux, covering an area that is roughly three kilometers wide by 4 kilometers long.
context_section_description: The soils of the Pomerol region are very diverse with a mixture of gravel, sand and clay scattered across the plateau. Roughly speaking the vineyard soils to the north and east, closer to the border of Saint-Émilion tend to have more clay while the soils to the west and south become lighter and more gravelly. The plateau on which Pomerol sits is bordered by three rivers, the Barbanne to the north, the Isle to the west and Dordgogne and the city of Libourne to the south. As the terrain moves down the slopes of the plateau and towards these rivers the soils become more alluvial and sandy.
  The majority of the Pomerol plateau is made up of sandy clay marl that is layered with gravel that dates back to the Günzian period (and is the same gravel found in the Médoc and Graves AOC), with the gravel on the lower slopes closer to Libourne coming from younger Mindel glaciation period. The vines on the lighter, sandier soils tend to ripen earlier than those on soils with higher clay content but also tend to have less powerful fruit and aging potential.
caption: The soils of Pomerol are varied and include a mixture of clay, gravel and sand.
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