Château Pédesclaux 2015

Critic scores

• James Suckling94
• Wine Enthusiast93
• Vinous92
• Decanter92
• Jeb Dunnuck91
• Wine Advocate90

The 2015 vintage in Pauillac

Vintage benchmark: 93/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A hot summer tempered by August rains gave expansive wines, with rounded tannins and generous fruit.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Pauillac. 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

Intense deep garnet color. The nose quickly reveals great complexity with aromas of blackcurrant, orange peel and spices, brought by the Petit verdot present in the Château Pédesclaux blend for the first time. Aeration allows you to appreciate the full breadth of this aromatic palette marked by licorice, cinnamon and cardamom. We find a very nice volume on the palate, with notes of gingerbread and blond tobacco, characteristic of the great Pauillac terroirs. The texture of the tannins, suave and silky, shows a very beautiful harmony between power, elegance and subtlety.

Blend of the 2015 vintage

Figures from the 2015 sheet

• 35 yrsVine age

Winemaking

For the second year, we are using our 100% gravity vat in the interest of total respect for the grapes and the wine! Thus, the harvest collected in small crates is cooled in a cold room for 24 hours then transported by elevator to the sorting tables. After selection, the uncrushed berries are delicately placed in rolling vats, which transport them like caviar into truncated conical vats adapted to the size of each plot. Following pre-fermentation maceration, allowing the aromas and color to diffuse gently, fermentation can take place with temperatures favoring slow extraction and intense expression of fruit. A long vatting follows, allowing everything to harmonize. The wine will then be poured by gravity into new barrels (50%) and one-wine barrels (50%), produced with long-heated barrels.

Terroir

Beneath the vines of Pédesclaux lies a geological masterpiece whose origins date back 40 million years. It is this unique terroir, quintessentially Médoc, that the 1855 classification recognises. The château stands on a plateau of gravel overlooking the town of Pauillac; the soil is made up of clay-limestone gravels, in reality a mixture of clay, limestone, fine gravel and pebbles. These plots in fact adjoin renowned properties such as Mouton-Rothschild and Pontet-Canet. Pédesclaux works with three different grape varieties: 47% Cabernet Sauvignon for the structure of the wine, 48% Merlot for roundness, and 2% Cabernet Franc and 3% Petit Verdot for aromatic complexity.