Château d'Agassac 2017

The 2017 vintage in Haut-Médoc

Vintage benchmark: 85/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: April frost cut the crop in half: the plots that were spared give fine, classic wines, and the vintage must be judged estate by estate.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Haut-Médoc. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.

Tasting

2017 is, for Agassac, a vintage without excess, with fine aromatic ripeness,

dense wines, ripe tannins and genuine balance allowing the full

finesse and energy of our wine to be expressed.

Blend of the 2017 vintage

Figures from the 2017 sheet

• 34 hl/haYield
• 30 yrsVine age
• 230,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Vinification in 23 temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, cuvaison of 3 to 4 weeks, extraction by punching down.

Ageing

12 to 15 months, partially in barrel

Terroir

The estate's two great assets lie in the quality of its terroir and in its precious capital of old vines. The terroir, with its warm, well-drained deep gravel soils and its exposure to the sun, is marked by a very early-ripening character, and Agassac is often the first to harvest in the region. The vineyard, made up of two walled blocks totalling 42 hectares, consists mainly of old vines — 40 years old on average across 22 hectares — which form the qualitative heart of production. Since 1997 the picture has been reshaped by grubbing up certain less worthy parcels and by planting Cabernet on the finest gravel soils, until then unplanted.