Château Carbonnieux 2020

The 2020 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 94/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: An early, hot year, with a harvest under pressure: a dense, juicy classic, ripe without heaviness.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Pessac-Léognan. 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

The 2020 red already shows a very beautiful purple colour, the colour is sustained. The nose shows notes of black fruits, blueberries and blackcurrant. The palate is at once soft, fruity and full. This blend shows a fine expression of each grape variety, with precision and finesse. This 2020 vintage will give a great deal of satisfaction and many possible food pairings, as the wines are fruity, ample and free of tannic roughness.

The vintage

The particularly mild and rainy autumn-winter of 2019-2020 prompted an early budburst. Around 20 March, budbreak was 10 to 15 days early, a lead that was maintained throughout the cycle thanks to generally favourable weather. Flowering, around 20 May, took place in good conditions, without coulure or millerandage. Véraison was early and uniform, around 20 July for the first grapes, although some plots in the south lagged a little because of the summer drought. There was almost no rain between 17 June and 21 September, but the vines, whose soils are worked very regularly, showed strong resistance to stress. The harvest began on 19 August, about ten days early; the grapes were healthy everywhere and ripeness was well spread over time. The berries lost water at the end of summer, giving concentrated juices, thick skins and low yields.

Blend of the 2020 vintage

Figures from the 2020 sheet

• 14.5 % vol.Alcohol
• 40 hl/haYield

Winemaking

Fermentation in temperature-controlled stainless-steel vats, average duration 10 days. 27 batches. Barrelling from 15/12/2020 to 10/01/2021.

Ageing

40% new oak, in Bordeaux barrels - 15 to 18 months

Terroir

A great terroir is a gift of Nature shaped by the work of men. The product of an original geological past, the Garonne gravel ridge of Château Carbonnieux has been under vine for more than seven centuries. The diversity of the soils along the slopes of this gravel "bean" offers a wide range of expression capable of producing exceptional white and red wines. Such a geological foundation guarantees complexity and breadth in the wines of this Pessac-Léognan Cru Classé. Today, the Carbonnieux estate covers 170 hectares of land at the gates of Bordeaux, of which the vines occupy 92 hectares in a single block, divided equally between red and white varieties.