Château Petit-Village 2016

Critic scores

• James Suckling96
• Vinous93
• Jeb Dunnuck93
• Decanter93
• Wine Advocate92
• Wine Spectator92

The 2016 vintage in Pomerol

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 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

Château Petit-Village 2016 reveals a pretty purple and dark color. The dense nose reveals notes of blackberry and violet, representative of the Pomerol appellation. The palate, round and powerful, has a beautiful tannic structure. The finish is long and ends with a spicy note.

Blend of the 2016 vintage

Figures from the 2016 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: 60% in new barrels and 40% in wine barrels, for 15 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.