Château Montrose 2017

Critic scores

• Wine Advocate95
• Vinous95
• Jeb Dunnuck95
• Wine Enthusiast95
• Wine Spectator94

The 2017 vintage in Saint-Estèphe

Vintage benchmark: 85/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: April frost cut the crop in half: the plots that were spared give fine, classic wines, and the vintage must be judged estate by estate.

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

The color is deep and shiny. The complex nose presents a beautiful aromatic intensity of raspberry, blackberry, blackcurrant and black cherry accompanied by floral and mineral notes. The structure, powerful and balanced, reveals the purity of the fruit. The palate, ample and elegant, is marked by the persistence of juicy fruit and reveals supple and integrated tannins. A vintage that bears the signature of its terroir and has very good ageing potential.

Blend of the 2017 vintage

Figures from the 2017 sheet

• 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.