#thetastiest | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wineanddinosaur · 6 years ago

Text

The 2018 Bordeaux Barrels Diary: Pétrus, Vieux Château Certan, Le Pin, Cheval-Blanc, Trotanoy (Wine Spectator)

Wine Spectator senior editor James Molesworth is in France for his 2018 vintage Bordeaux barrel tastings. While there, he's visiting the châteaus of some of the region's top estates, as well as some up-and-coming new producers.

Finishing up my rota of visits, I concluded my annual rounds inPomerol.

I started with Hélène Garcin-Lévêque who, along with herhusband, Patrice, handles a few small estates. Clos l'Église, neighboring L'Église Clinet and boasting CabernetFranc vines planted prior to the devastating 1956 frost, is just14.5 acres. The 2018 L'Église Pomerol is loaded withintense raspberry and cherry compote flavors, with a good tug of tobacco throughthe finish, though it's fresh and polished overall.

The couple, whom I first met in Argentina over a decade agoworking on their Poesia Malbec, has embraced the pure, unadorned style that hasgained momentum in neighboring St.-Emilion, and their 2018Château d'Arce Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux is a textbook example, offering a fresh and floral feel within a lithe frame.Their Château Barde-Haut St.-Emilion is always a delightful and ageworthy value, andthe 2018offers a swath of dark cherry preserve laced with sanguine and alderthreads. They've also renamed a recently purchased estate in St.-Emilion asPoesia. It sits atop the limestoneplateau and offers the epitome of the superfine, mineral-driven profile thatis this terroir's hallmark. Poesia's 25-acre vineyard had 17 acres recently replanted, and the wine is finally starting to come into its own.

From there it was a stone's throw to Pétrus, an estate whichmost readers are familiar with. It seems winemaker Olivier Berrouet has finally settledin here. He handled the vagaries of 2018 well, slowing down thevinification by moving less wine during remontageto avoid over-extraction from the small and thick-skinned berries. The 2018 Pétrus Pomerol ishands down the best Pétrus since the 2010, and may even top that benchmark—nosmall feat. It is an enormous and seemingly complete wine already, offering adense and lush core of raspberry reduction that just won't quit as it movesalong, supported by graphite girders that are deeply embedded in the finish.There are black tea and apple wood accents as well, but this is just an amazingtorrent of fruit. Yields were a respectable 2.7 tons per acre here. Also of note is thedrop of Cabernet Franc in the blend (1 percent). It rarely makes it in unless thevintage runs late to ripen it fully. The 2010 had 4 percent … draw your conclusionsthusly.

That drop of Cabernet Franc in Pétrus is an interesting clueto the vintage in Pomerol. One that was further expounded upon at neighboringVieux Château Certan, which has a hefty 30 percent Cab Franc in the final blend, therest Merlot.

"Cabernet Franc was really needed this year," says AlexandreThienpont. "The Merlot was so ripe, almost heavy. The Merlot was like amountain—huge, but with peaks and valleys. The Cabernet Franc was the filler,to round off and fill in," he adds, gesturing with his finger to show a jaggedup and down line before moving it in a gentle wavy line left to right.

Even with just 30 percent in the blend, the just-drawn casksample of the 2018 Vieux Château Certan Pomerol starts off similar toa Loire red: crisp and superfresh, with high-pitched red fruit and a notabletobacco leaf aspect. We switch to the Le Pin (more on that in a minute)before returning to the VCC after about 15 minutes. Presto change-o, it's a newwine, fleshed out and dark, with a stunning violet aroma and a large core of pure cassis that cascades over a loam note on the finish.

"This was a vintage where you could get a green characterbecause it was so dry," says Alexandre's son Guillaume. "So we did a littleleaf-pulling on the morning side to give the fruit some more ripening."

In addition, the exacting Thienponts pounced on theiranti-mildew spray program (with a conventional rather than organic treatment)just before and following the flowering. 2.9 tons per acre is the result, a normal-sizedcrop.

As for the Le Pin, it's going to provide a sensational yinto Pétrus' yang. Le Pin is situated on gravel, Pétrus on clay. On the surface, clay would be the favored soil in a dry year, thanks to its water-retaining qualities, butthe water table at Le Pin isn't that deep, and the rainy spring gave thevineyard enough reserve. A pure Merlot, the 2018 Château Le Pin Pomerol is aged in 100 percent new oak(vs. Petrus' 50 percent), yet it doesn't show an oaky side. Instead, it has a very deepwell of boysenberry reduction that forms its core, with a thick licorice bandcoursing through and a smoldering earth note on the finish. It's more backwardthan the Pétrus, and on a par with its 2010 as well. There's a reason I typicallyschedule these two visits back-to-back. The compare and contrast is alwaysilluminating. In vintages as good as '18, it is downright enthralling.

As I left VCC, I realized that the Right Bank apparently hada leg up on the Left Bank in handling the mildew of '18. It wasn't a functionof conventional treatments versus organic versus biodynamic, as everyone hadissues. Instead, there was the timing, as Nicolas Audebert pointed out while Iwas at Canon the day before. Audebert noted how the Right Bank's last wave of mildewwas earlier than the Left's. In the Médoc, the final infestation came inJuly, just as the clusters were closing up, creating a major headache forgrowers. In addition, the Right Bank's estates are typically much smaller thanthe Médoc's, allowing growers who typically live on-site to react faster andtreat the vineyard more quickly.

My visit to VCC was followed by a quick drive into Libourne, where the office of ÉtablissementsJean-Pierre Moueix front the quai, totaste through the lineup of wines with Christian Moueix. The usuallypoker-faced Moueix broke into a bright smile as he gave histhoughts on the vintage.

"They are very complete already," he says of he wines. "A high level oftannins, but soft tannins, and so much fruit. There are some big Pomerols in'18. You might expect with so much sun that the Pomerols would be like '03 (anotoriously hot year that resulted in some off-kilter reds). But the key wastemperatures, which were in the low 90s. We never got to 100 as we did in '03.The '18 reminds me of '90 and of course technically today we are so much betterthan we were back then. The Merlot was so, so good, and we finally reached fullmaturity on Cabernet Franc too."

Moueix and winemaker Eric Murisasco tweaked the amount ofnew oak up from 40 to 50 percent on the top wines here, a sign of their robustnature. The result is a lineup of superb wines, from values such as the juicy,fruit-driven 2018 Château La Serre St.-Emilion and winey, inviting 2018 Château Plince Pomerol. Asuper savvy buy will be the 2018 Clos St.-Martin St.-Emilion, which has an intense beam ofplum sauce and melted licorice flavors, yet maintains poise with its chalkyminerality.The 2018 Clos La MadeleineSt.-Emilion is the first vintage for this estate under fullcontrol of the Moueix team,and it shows harmony and finesse to its pure raspberry fruit, anise andapple wood notes; gone is the overtly toasty persona of previous vintages.

The 2018 Château La Grave à Pomerol Pomerol is a dense, fleshy wine with a greattug of warm earth behind its wall of fruit. The 2018 Château Bourgneuf Pomerol is one of thetastiest and freshest examples of this wine in recent years. The 2018 Château Latour àPomerol Pomerol is a polished, regal display of Merlot. At the top end, La Fleur-Pétrusand Trotanoy are among the elite wines in the vintage, while the 2018 Château Bélair-Monange St.-Emilion is the best vintage yet from this relatively newlycreated estate.Moueix is more than right to smile this en primeur season.

To wrap up the day, I darted back over the border intoneighboring St.-Emilion, where Cheval-Blanc looms as a potential monument tothe vintage, thanks to ideally situated clay and gravel soils and a hefty doseof Cabernet Franc.

Technical director Pierre-Oliver Clouet faced the sameissues as the rest of Bordeaux: a rainy first half, with intense mildewpressure, followed by a dry and sunny second half of the vintage.

"If you look at the chart [of temperatures and rainy periods],you would think we have a very, very ripe, showy wine, like '03 or '09," says Clouet."But the reality is we have a very, very ripe wine that is still classicallybuilt."

The window of harvest here was long, covering Sept. 10to Oct. 11. Merlot was picked early, including older vines on clay soilsthat would normally be picked later.

"The Merlot was terrific and it was ready early, because theclay had the water through the summer, so they never stopped ripening,"explains Clouet.

The Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon were picked later, withyounger vines on gravel soils being the last picked. "They needed a littlelonger because they struggled a bit during the drought," he says.

With a decent-size crop and high-quality grapes across theestate's 53 parcels, the selection for the grandvin is an eye-opening 74 percent of the yield, the most since 1993. The 2018 Château Cheval-Blanc St.-Emilion intense andsappy in feel, with very concentrated kirsch, cherry paste and plum reductionnotes. Deeply layered, but with terrific drive thanks to its tannic spine, thefinish delivers waves of smoldering tobacco and loam. All that and it comes off as fresh and creamyin feel, with a high level of pixelation that results in a seamless display ofterrific detail. Perhaps it is fitting that I wound up tasting this blend of 54percent Merlot, 40 percent Cabernet Franc and 6 percent Cabernet Sauvignon asthe very end of my visits, as it just might be the wine of thevintage.

You can follow James Molesworth on Instagram, at Instagram.com/JMolesworth1, and on Twitter, at Twitter.com/JMolesworth1.

source https://www.winespectator.com/blogs/show/id/2018-Bordeaux-Barrel-Tastings-Report-Petrus-Pin-Cheval-Blanc-Vieux-Chateau-Certan

0 notes