Château Montrose 2004

The 2004 vintage in Saint-Estèphe

Vintage benchmark: 88/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: High yields and a dry September gave a classic, unexaggerated vintage, straightforward, now at its peak.

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

Color: dense, purple. Very complex nose of black fruits, tobacco and violet. Rich and very fresh palate: black fruits, chocolate, zan. Very pleasant, balanced, fruity, fresh and suave wine. Good length, with clean tannins providing sweetness. Beautiful aromatic complexity.

Blend of the 2004 vintage

Figures from the 2004 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 45 hl/haYield
• 40 yrsVine age
• 250,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

The alcoholic fermentations take place in stainless steel vats and last around twenty days. Several pump-overs are carried out per day, with the aim of promoting the skin-seed/juice exchange. Pre-blends between batches of the same grape variety, of identical quality, are carried out from run-off, before malolactic fermentations.

Ageing

16 to 18 months in French oak barrels (60% new barrels, 40% in wine barrels)

Terroir

This is a 95 ha vineyard in a single block, something extremely rare in the Médoc, planted on a very well exposed gravel rise on the banks of the Gironde. The vineyard thus overlooks the estuary. The proximity of this considerable stretch of water, known locally as the river, has a very moderating climatic effect on the vineyard. The river softens and tempers the rigours of the climate. This proximity to water and to the tides eases the severity of winter cold and moderates excessively hot summers. The name Montrose is said to derive distantly from the wild heather moorland that once covered this slope, whose pretty wine-lee colour is well known.