Domaine de Chevalier 2021

The 2021 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 86/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: Frost, mildew, then a cool summer brought back Bordeaux of old: taut, vibrant wines, shorter but elegant.

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

Shiny dark garnet robe, black at the core. Pure, typical and fresh nose of ripe Cabernet Sauvignon grown on gravelly soil, where wild fruits, plants and spices mingle: blackcurrant, blackberry, blueberry, sour cherry, peppermint, cedar, heather. Palate of great structure, unctuous and fresh, dense with silky, fine and elegant tannins. The Merlot brings a delicate, fruity flesh. The Cabernet Franc ensures refinement and elegance and the Petit Verdot releases its fruity and spicy energy. A classy finish where flavours of graphite and liquorice appear. The 80% of Cabernet Sauvignon is in balance in this blend and ensures a great wine for laying down, full of freshness.

The vintage

A complicated vintage whose whites and reds are nevertheless of great class. A chaotic climatic and viticultural season: seven waves of frost hit the vineyard between 3 April and 3 May (6, 8, 12, 13, 17 and 19 April and 3 May), with temperatures down to -5°C and significant damage, particularly in Sauternes and Graves. Then a deluge, 320 mm of rain between May and June (including 100 mm on the flowering, in the second ten days of June), and finally downy mildew on the bunches in July, particularly noticeable on the Merlots. A real training for the whole vineyard, which was on its way (conversion) to organic farming. An extraordinary end to the season, under a large anticyclone, for ripeness and harvest. September, the month of the whites, mild and very positive, fully completed the ripeness of the Sauvignon Blancs and Sémillons, which gained in power, aromatic intensity and finesse of flavour while keeping a freshness essential to their balance. October, the month of the reds, brought a huge anticyclone, fully sunny, windy, dry and cool: such conditions rule out any hint of grey rot and ensure the best ripeness, particularly for Cabernet Sauvignon, the king variety of the gravelly terroir.

Red harvest: 28 September to 12 October.

Blend of the 2021 vintage

Figures from the 2021 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age

Winemaking

Hand-picked into small crates, with sorting in the vineyard and on the sorting table, then optical sorting. Gravity-fed vatting into temperature-controlled vats, alcoholic fermentation, manual punching down. Maceration of about 3 weeks, 30°C maximum (4 vat rooms: steel, aluminium-coated steel, truncated-cone concrete and wooden vats).

Ageing

Fermentation in vat, then ageing in barrels: 18 months (4 months on the lees). New barrels: 35%.

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.