Domaine de Chevalier 2022

The 2022 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 98/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: Three heatwaves and extreme drought gave, against all odds, wines of exceptional concentration without harshness — the great sun-drenched year.

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 Merlots are intense in both aroma and flavour, with dense, tender and fleshy tannins; they are already expressing themselves with finesse and delicacy. The Cabernet Sauvignons, with their impressive potential, are undoubtedly exceptional. The first tastings leave us in awe, revealing an extraordinary intensity. Making up the majority of the blend (65 to 70%), they will help make the 2022 Domaine de Chevalier red a vintage of anthology that will mark the history of the Domaine.

The vintage

A memorable great vintage. The climate: a winter with little rain (200 mm), rather cool, with frosts until March, helped delay budbreak and protect the vines from the spring frost of the night of 4 to 5 April (-4°C). Flowering 10 days early: in mid-April, fine weather and mild temperatures, the vines grew quickly with a magnificent budburst; a beautiful flowering around 15-20 May, heralding an early harvest. Heatwave and hail on 18 June: the first wave of high temperatures (40°C under shelter on the 18th) ended in the evening with a hailstorm that hit the west side of the rows; this month was the only one to be well watered, by stormy showers. A hot and very dry July, with a second wave of high temperatures from 10 to 18 July (40°C on the 18th); watering of young plantings, while the old vines held up very well. August was also very hot and dry: 20 days above 30°C under shelter, including a third wave of high temperatures from 1 to 13 August (over 39°C on the 11th); only two significant rainfalls, 14 mm on the 14th and 8 mm on the 17th. In September the fine weather brought a fourth heat wave from the 11th to the 13th; the month was punctuated by a shower of 8 mm on the 8th and 20 mm over 4 days at the end of the month, benefiting the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Red harvest: 5 to 30 September. "Everything is superlative in this 2022 vintage: the climate, the drought, the juice content, the quantity of berries per vat, the colour, the gustatory intensity... However, the cool terroir, the old vines and our precise choices have given a magnificent freshness and a superb balance." (Olivier Bernard)

Blend of the 2022 vintage

Figures from the 2022 sheet

• 14 % vol.Alcohol
• 40 hl/haYield

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

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.