When it comes to wines, we all know where to look for the best quality wine in the world: Spain. But closing in on the Ribera de Duero and La Rioja wines of Spain is a remarkable winery called Le Pin.

The vineyards stretch across an almost infinitesmal plot of land: 2.5 hectares. Located in Southwestern France, Le Pin is perhaps the most highly-valued agricultural piece of land in the world. The village lies at the heart of the Bordeaux Region of France, known for the world’s best merlot grape wines.

Mr. Thienpont is the owner of Le Pin vineyards. The reason that this winery is so unique, aside from its size, is the fact that it has only existed for the last 30 years, unlike its surrounding Bordeaux competitors. Many point out the fact that you really can’t talk about comparisons from the previous century, no formal cellar housing vintage wines or the like.

Today, in 2011, the vineyard is now being converted from the single-storie building that once stored the first bottles of Le Pin back in 1979, into a high-tech winery. Recently, a living room and kitchen were added onto the building to accomodate a handful of workers.

The winery produces approximately 5 to 6,000 bottles of wine a year. But the primary reason for its popularity is its exquisite taste, likened to a heavy Pinot Noir, yet blended using merlot grapes.

In order to achieve such a light, yet rich-tasting wine, Mr. Thienpont points out the laborious years of painful grape selection, hand picking the ripest grapes, while trashing the overly or underly riped ones. This tedious work began to pay off in 1982, when private collectors began to purchase the wine at just under 20 euros a bottle. Le Pin recieved internation acclaim as early as 1987.

Nowadays, the 2009 vintage of Le Pin is selling for around €20,000 a case, or €1,600 a bottle. Mr. Thienpont has also recently acquired another vineyeard located in Belgium, where his grandfather grew up. He expects to have a new wine on the market by the end of the year called L’if, but unlike Le Pin, the production will ultimately reach about 20,000 bottles a year, and have a much more full-bodied taste than its predecessor.

Watch the following video to learn about how to read wine labels in English:

Click here