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A place where the spirit breathes

Château La Croix de Gay’s vineyard and farm buildings are nestled around and in the heart of the hamlet of Pignon.

This small village on Pomerol’s northern ‘hillside’ is a unique place where pure clay and highly gravelly Gunz gravel, the distinctive geological features of the appellation’s high terraces, meet on a gentle slope.

The name of this village, overlooking the Barbanne river (a tributary of the Isle), perpetuates the memory of Hélios Pignon, a 15th-century inhabitant of Pomerol. His surname appears in 1477 in the description of the eleven large tenements or ‘Maynes’ (concessions) organising the commandery of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem (Ordo Hospitalis Sancti Johannis Hierosolymitani) at the end of the 15th century, which also marked the end of the Hundred Years’ War.

This Catholic religious, hospitable and military order, founded in the 11th century with the aim of ensuring the hospitality and defence of pilgrims in the holy places, received numerous donations over the course of its history, including, in the early 12th century, the ‘Terres de Barbanne’, now known as Pomerol.

In these ‘Terres de Barbanne’, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem fulfilled its vocation as a host to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which was reaching its apogee.

The Tours route (voie turonensis), which pilgrims followed from Paris, followed the ancient route from Saintes to Saint-Emilion on the Pomerol plateau.

The exact location of the Pomerol ‘hospital’ has now been forgotten, but there is still La Croix de Gay (listed as a historic monument), a 12th century crossroads on this pilgrimage route. This monument is at the heart of the Pomerol plateau, bordering the historic landholdings of ‘La Fleur’ and ‘Pignon et Rougier’ and not far from the ‘Barrauderie’ land described in 1477.

The La Croix de Gay monument may have indicated the ford at the bottom of the northern slope of Pomerol, where travellers and then pilgrims could cross the Barbanne river on foot.

This ancient and then medieval road runs along the sunrise edge of the hamlet of Pignon, a historic village in Pomerol and the birthplace of Château La Croix de Gay.

‘HERE IN 1793 J. TREMOLIERE CURE OF POMEROL HID THE PROSCRIBED GIRONDINS BARBAROUX, LOUVET, VALADY. S.H.A. LIBOURNE’.

S.H.A. LIBOURNE

A strange combination of a lawyer from Marseilles, a novelist from Paris and a soldier from a famous noble Aveyron family, all three ‘Girondin’ deputies on the run following the insurrectionary days of 31 May and 2 June 1793.

Following the pilgrimage route from the east, leaving the hospital-era presbytery on the right, the impasse de Pignon leads to the historic village square.

The layout of the square, now dominated by the façade of the modern vat house, is still almost entirely devoted to wine production. Although the use of some of the buildings has changed, it is still easy to imagine the dwellings around the village well, the cooper’s workshop, the shoeing shed to prepare the oxen for the work in the vineyards and even the memory of the old church, probably built in 1081 and destroyed in 1897, the stones of which were reused to build one of the estate’s barrel cellars the pediment of which bears the inscriptions of the name of the village ‘Pignon’ and the year of construction ‘1898’.

Another inscription, affixed by the Société Historique et Archéologique de Libourne to the pediment of the former presbytery, perpetuates the memory of an episode in the French Revolution.

A place where the spirit breathes

Château La Croix de Gay’s vineyard and farm buildings are nestled around and in the heart of the hamlet of Pignon.

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