Château Phélan Ségur 2003

The 2003 vintage in Saint-Estèphe

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

Vintage character: The historic heatwave halted ripening in young vines: very ripe, low-acid wines, at their best in Saint-Estèphe, where the clays held on to freshness.

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

Dark red color, deep almost black tint. Complex nose of ripe fruit, spicy secondary aromas, resulting from the happy wine/wood marriage. Very rich finish with a full and creamy structure. Sumptuous tannins in perfect harmony.

Blend of the 2003 vintage

Figures from the 2003 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 35 yrsVine age
• 200,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Fermentation and vatting constitute the two main phases of winemaking. Quickly, the marc formed from the solids of the grapes (mainly the skins and seeds) occupies the upper third of the vat. It is essential to promote contact between these two elements during alcoholic fermentation.

Ageing

16 months in oak barrels.

Terroir

The terroir of Phélan Ségur, in the eastern part of the commune of Saint-Estèphe bordering the estuary, is made up of gravelly alluvium deposited when the Garonne was a torrential river 650,000 years ago. It consists of pebbles and above all of gravel coated in clayey sands. The varying thickness of these deposits is readily apparent, since it is what determines the rolling landscape of much of the Saint-Estèphe area. The alluvial layers rest on a marine formation of limestone dating from the period when the tip of the Médoc, close to the ocean, lay beneath the sea.