Domaine de Chevalier 2018

The 2018 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

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

Vintage character: After a spring marked by mildew, the heat concentrated a small crop: rich, ripe wines with great depth of material.

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

Bright colour, dark red, black at the core. Great chiselled, complex nose dominated by a cocktail of concentrated, fresh red and black fruits. Fine spicy, balsamic and empyreumatic touches embellish this bouquet. The palate is immediately ample, very refined, fleshy, dense, concentrated and radiating exquisite flavours reminiscent of black cherry, blackberry and blueberry, in a delicately spiced atmosphere of white pepper and pine woods. Freshness and tension balance this great richness. The wine is powerful but fresh, intensely fleshy but delicate. These tasting paradoxes are the signature of the greatest successes. Very high ageing potential.

The vintage

An exceptional vintage, marked by the succession of two extreme but complementary climatic seasons. First a rainy period from January to early July: a year's rainfall in only seven months put the winegrowers' morale to the test, but the essential water reserves in the soil were at their highest. Then a hot, sunny and dry period from July to the end of the harvest: these excellent water reserves were abundantly used by the vineyard during four months of a historically bright, hot and dry summer. In the gravelly soils ripeness was ideal, with an almost perfect balance between power, record concentration and freshness.

Red harvest: 18 September to 11 October.

Blend of the 2018 vintage

Figures from the 2018 sheet

• 14.5 % vol.Alcohol
• 100,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Hand-picked into small crates, with careful sorting in the vineyard, then manual bunch sorting in the cellar and optical berry sorting after destemming. Four vat rooms (steel, stainless steel, tulip-shaped concrete and wooden vats) to optimise plot selection, perfect extraction and refine the blend.

Ageing

Aged in barrels (grand vin), one third new oak, for 16 to 18 months, with lees stirring during the first 4 months.

Terroir

The overall structure of the Chevalier soils takes the form of a layer of black gravelly sand with an average thickness of 60 to 90 cm. Variations in the thickness and depth of the gravel vein create a mosaic of soils that calls for very fine plot-by-plot management, even though the whole shows an evident homogeneity. Overall, these soils are acidic, poor and very free-draining. The very rich subsoil is made up of a clay-gravel base mixed with alios (iron pan), into which the vine roots deeply, thus overcoming the water variations caused by the climate. Vine growth and grape ripening therefore proceed in a remarkably regular manner.