Château Laroque 2016

The 2016 vintage in Saint-Émilion

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

Vintage character: A dry summer on full water reserves gave fresh, deep wines, magical on the asteria limestone.

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

Breed, finesse, tension: a summary of the vintage on the limestone plateau. 95% Merlot, a brilliant variety this year.

The early harmony of the pulp and the straightness of the tannic axis are indeed on brilliant display. In the geography of Saint-Émilion taste, the finesse and the delicate, "limestone" flavour place this wine closer to the village than it actually is.

The vintage

Manual harvest. Merlots picked on 13, 14 and from 17 to 22 October, Cabernets on 22 October. Yield of 48 hl/ha; 47% of the grapes and juices selected for the grand vin. Bottled from 2 to 6 July 2018.

Blend of the 2016 vintage

Figures from the 2016 sheet

• 14.35 % vol.Alcohol
• 48 hl/haYield

Winemaking

Whole-berry vatting by gravity. Plot-by-plot vinification in small concrete vats. Gentle mixed extraction by punching down and pumping over. Protective macerations (aroma preservation) aimed at more flesh and salinity.

Ageing

Reductive ageing on fine lees, partly in barrels and partly in French and Austrian oak foudres (50% new wood): 1st racking after 4 to 6 months of ageing (before summer), 2nd one year later, before bottling.

Terroir

Around the château there is a large area of outcropping limestone plateau, also found at Clos Fourtet or Château Canon, which gives chestnut-coloured clays. Further east lies a mantle of red clays, Agenais molasse similar to that of Pavie-Macquin or Troplong-Mondot. The clay terraces to the east and the west-facing slopes are made up of the Fronsadais molasse that has made the reputation of Ausone or Tertre-Roteboeuf. A thin part of the plain vineyard, whose wines do not go into the grand vin of Laroque, consists of brown soils resulting from the erosion of the limestone ridge tops.