Domaine de Chevalier 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

Deep, dark red colour, black at the core, brilliant. Great nose, intense and distinctive, with a floral expression mainly on the fruit: black cherry, blackcurrant, blueberry. Finely peppery and vanilla spices. Aromas of tannins and slightly peaty earth. On the palate, an impressive sensation of density, fleshy tannins and contained power. The flesh of the wine is fine, firm and very freshly fruity. The omnipresent, high-class tannins recall the delicate, peaty flavour of great vintages for keeping. The fruit is everywhere, intensely. Power, balance, ripeness, concentration, length, freshness, tension: everything is there for a great vintage to keep.

The vintage

A vintage of very high quality. Dry whites and reds have produced great wines, concentrated in character: tasty, powerful, structured, complex and authentic. Despite the Covid crisis, the viticultural work, from pruning to harvest, could be organised precisely and led to a harvest of magnificent quality, fully ripened by this early, sunny year. A very advanced flowering, from mid-May, guaranteed an equally early harvest. The vineyard, copiously watered in spring, held up well to a hot and very dry July. August, mild and sunny, interspersed with good rains, allowed a ripening cycle in the best conditions. In September, the fine dry weather with wide thermal amplitudes fully ripened the fruit and concentrated all the varieties; the cool mornings were ideal for preserving the freshness of the fruit. The grapes harvested were ripe, of high quality and of a concentration rarely achieved. This "hot year" type of vintage, but with a lovely freshness, offers rich, powerful, concentrated, silky and elegant wines, in white as in red. Special mention for the Domaine de Chevalier red: concentration, density, elegance, balance and freshness, at the highest level. It will certainly be on the podium of the finest successes in the modern history of the Domaine.

Red harvest: 11 to 30 September.

Blend of the 2020 vintage

Figures from the 2020 sheet

• 14 % vol.Alcohol
• 38 hl/haYield
• 35 yrsVine age
• 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.