Château Petit-Village 2014

Critic scores

• Vinous92
• Jeb Dunnuck91
• Wine Enthusiast91
• Wine Spectator91

The 2014 vintage in Pomerol

Vintage benchmark: 89/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: The Indian summer served the cabernet francs better than the merlots: sound, fresh wines, without great depth.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Pomerol. 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

Petit-Village 2014 will be a generous vintage combining the power and sweetness of the great Pomerol. Slightly spicy, black fruits for an elegant and charming nose. A round mouth, suave at the start, straighter at the finish with well-controlled tension and ripe tannins and an airy and spicy finish. A complete, elegant wine designed to age.

Blend of the 2014 vintage

Figures from the 2014 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age
• 30,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

The work in the cellars is carried out vat by vat, favoring extractions at the start of fermentation with punching down at the core. We then reduced our work significantly in order to preserve the elegance of the wines. The fermentations went very well (10 days), the maceration of the batches lasted between 26 and 30 days. The malolactic fermentations were carried out in barrels and were completed just before Christmas.

Ageing

After the malolactic fermentation stage, all of the wines benefit from well-controlled ageing in oak barrels: 65% in new barrels and 35% in wine barrels, for 14 months.

Terroir

Château Le Petit-Village lies at the heart of Pomerol, on a magnificent clay-gravel plateau. It is a single-block vineyard of 10.5 hectares forming a triangle. Its terroir is composed of deep gravels coated with light sandy clays over a subsoil of alios known as crasse de fer, characteristic of the great wines of Pomerol. Every terroir has a grape variety that remains true to it. At Château Petit-Village, each plot, with its own personality, is planted with the variety suited to it. Merlot predominates on the property (75%): it provides the flesh of the wine and gives it its velvety texture, its roundness and its generosity. To this are added Cabernet Franc (18%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (7%), varieties essential for structure and complexity.