Domaine de Chevalier 2024

The 2024 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 87/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A rainy spring and a difficult flowering reduced the crop; the dry October saved fine, light, easy-drinking wines.

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

Refined and intense nose of small red and black fruits as well as fresh humus.

Around the finely spicy, peppery and woody notes of the Cabernet Sauvignon, wild strawberry, blackberry and blackcurrant express themselves with freshness. The Merlot brings a soft, deep and appealing touch of black cherry.

The palate, flavourful, precise and harmonious, stands out for its density of fine, fruity tannins. It shows no weakness through to the end of a long, elegant and luminous finish.

A great deal of class and distinction for this exquisite wine of classic style.

Very good balance, very good ageing potential.

The vintage

A mild, humid winter gave way to an early spring that remained rainy but, fortunately, free of spring frosts. These damp conditions favoured rapid and generous growth of all varieties. Downy mildew naturally tried to make an appearance, but it was poorly received by winegrowers on a war footing, scalded by the 2023 vintage. A fine flowering with good timing, then a fine summer (July-August), dry and warm enough to ensure good ripeness in the best conditions. Rain returned in the first ten days of September, but the whites, already well ripe and being harvested, had no time to be affected. For the reds, the varieties with more resistant skins and the well-draining soils made it possible to wait for optimal phenolic ripeness. Very precise day-by-day decisions and selective harvesting up to 8 October ensured a high level of quality, although with a lower sugar level than in recent vintages. The radiant fruit, the pulpiness of a delicate flesh, the spicy and mineral side and the refined, elegant tannic structure are the ingredients of this blend.

Red harvest: 20 September to 8 October.

Blend of the 2024 vintage

Figures from the 2024 sheet

• 12.45 % vol.Alcohol
• 48 hl/haYield
• 100,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

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.