Château Fonroque 2018

The 2018 vintage in Saint-Émilion

Vintage benchmark: 96/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: After the mildew, the heat concentrated a small harvest: rich, ripe and very dense wines.

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

Lovely density and finesse for a wine with character. Blackberry and blueberry on a fresh, bright structure, with polished tannins and lively acidity.

The vintage

2018 was a hot year, rainy in spring then dry during the summer. After a rather cool and wet winter, the vines broke bud late, the abundance of water in the soils delaying their warming. Rainfall remained very abundant in spring, together with above-average temperatures. These conditions were very favourable to mildew, which proved very difficult to control, causing contained but real crop losses. With the arrival of summer, dry weather set in. Summer 2018 was the hottest after 2003, but without the blockages of the latter, the spring rains having filled the soil water reserves. Veraison was early and ripening took place in ideal conditions: dry weather and strong night-time temperature variations, favourable to the evolution of polyphenols. These conditions gave grapes with strong tannic potential and a southern character that was not to be reinforced during vinification. The key to success in this vintage was preserving freshness. Harvest from 17 September to 1 October.

Blend of the 2018 vintage

Figures from the 2018 sheet

• 40 hl/haYield
• 30 yrsVine age
• 60,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

In thermoregulated concrete vats.

Ageing

16 months: 30% in new barrels, 70% in barrels of one wine or more.

Terroir

Limestone plateau and limestone-clay hillside.