Château d'Agassac 2019

Critic scores

• Wine Enthusiast94
• James Suckling91
• Vinous90

The 2019 vintage in Haut-Médoc

Vintage benchmark: 96/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A hot end of summer after a rainy spring gave wines that hold ripeness and freshness together; the cabernets shine here.

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.

Blend of the 2019 vintage

Figures from the 2019 sheet

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

Winemaking

23 temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, cuvaison of between 21 and 26 days, no malolactic fermentation in

barrel. Extraction by punching down (terrace 4) and pump-over (terrace 5). Very gentle

extractions in 2019, as the material was very fine and easily extractable. Vinification at 24°C

Ageing

12-15 months, 60% in new oak and 40% in tank to preserve the fruit. Barrels chosen are

mostly made with oak from the Jupilles forest to accentuate the

tension of the wines. Barrels toasted at very low intensity, a slow toast to the core, to

preserve the expression of the terroir and the purity of aroma.

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.