Château Fombrauge 2024

The 2024 vintage in Saint-Émilion

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

Vintage character: A difficult flowering and a wet summer reduced the harvest: light, aromatic wines, to be drunk early.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Saint-Émilion. 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

A lovely dark red colour with brilliant purple highlights. Floral notes lead to red berries, eucalyptus, liquorice and mint, conferring a remarkable freshness. The attack is round and plush, complemented by a lovely persistence. A smooth and silky wine, with an elegant tannic structure.

The vintage

Mild and extremely wet winter, cool and still rainy spring, late arrival of summer. Harvest from 27 September to 11 October. Bottling: spring 2026.

Blend of the 2024 vintage

Figures from the 2024 sheet

• 26 hl/haYield
• 25 yrsVine age

Ageing

70% in barrels (half of them new oak), 30% in various vessels (stoneware, concrete, stainless steel)

Terroir

Château Fombrauge lies on the extension of the plateau and limestone slopes of Saint-Emilion; its large area favours a diversity of soils and exposures that give the wine of Fombrauge its complexity and identity. First, the front line of the main plateau, a relief typical of the Saint-Emilion vineyard on which Fombrauge sits, results from the partial erosion of the Tertiary formations by the rivers that surround it (the Dordogne and the Isle). The structure of this part is mainly composed of Tertiary starfish limestone (calcaire à astéries). The particularly high-quality south-facing slope consists of white clays where the Tertiary formations withstood this erosion. There are perched limestone plateaus, surrounded by slopes on which soft molassic rocks (clay mixed with limestone) outcrop.