Château Canon 2019

The 2019 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 95/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A hot end of summer on rehydrated soils gave a rare balance between freshness and substance.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Saint-Émilion. 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

Barely opened, it escapes from the bottle like a sweet summer scent... Ripe and expressive, bursting with life, the wine plunges into the glass in which bright notes of red fruit, lush strawberries and raspberries, spin around each other. A few more swirls of the glass and the fruit intensifies even further, allowing aromas of morello cherry burst forth. There is this constant sensation of sapidity, so smooth and tasty. The wine palpitates. Intense and sappy, throughout the tasting it preserves this juicy character which is characteristic of the vintage. It speaks to us of the mastery achieved in a year that was nevertheless hot and dry. It brings movement over the palate and invigorates the body. This is a generous yet precise Canon, which combines consistency with fluidity. THE VINTAGE

The vintage

Weather conditions

Winter: very mild

Spring: cool

Summer: exceptionally hot and dry

Autumn: very fine start to the season, some rainfall end September

Harvest dates

Merlot: 11 to 26 September

Cabernet Franc: 27 September to 4 October

pH: 3.5

Blend of the 2019 vintage

Figures from the 2019 sheet

• 14.5 % vol.Alcohol
• 45 hl/haYield
• 30 yrsVine age

Winemaking

Separate vinification, vatting using gravity, into conical shaped stainless steel vats with a double walled system for temperature control. Gravity run-off. Malolactic: 1/3 in new barrels and 2/3 in stainless steel vats.

Ageing

18 months in French oak barrels (50% new barrels), with medium or medium-long toasting.

Terroir

Château Canon occupies a south-west-facing limestone terrace that makes up most of its surface area. A quarter of the estate lies on the slope of this hillside, which descends gently towards the Dordogne. This imposing mass of sedimentary rock is criss-crossed by numerous galleries, evidence of the quarrying of this building material since the 16th century. The site, which peaks at 87 metres, benefits from perfect ventilation and a walled enclosure that protects the vines from spring frosts. This setting allowed the château to be among the few estates to produce wine during the severe cold of 1766 and 1956.