Château Pichon Comtesse 2024

Critic scores

• Vinous94-96
• Decanter96
• Wine Advocate91-93
• James Suckling92-93

The 2024 vintage in Pauillac

Vintage benchmark: 87/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A rainy spring and a difficult flowering reduced the crop; the dry October saved fine, light, easy-drinking wines.

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

Pink rose marks the nose of this wine, evolving toward the fruitier notes of raspberry and

blackcurrant jelly, but also toward floral and mineral nuances of rosewood, lemon

verbena and cedar, opening out onto iris, at once rooty and floral.

The palate, full, concentrated and subtle, opens on blackcurrant and brown tobacco. Powerful and broad,

it projects itself with persistence onto powdery tannins and notes of black tea and cocoa.

Blend of the 2024 vintage

Figures from the 2024 sheet

• 20 hl/haYield
• 28 yrsVine age
• 200,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

Plot-by-plot vinification with tank filling by gravity. Fermentation in temperature-controlled, double-walled, truncated-cone stainless steel tanks.

Ageing

Aged 18 months in barrel, 65% of which new oak, with a long-to-medium toast. Traditional racking without aeration and fining with egg whites.

Terroir

Close to the river, the 78 hectares of vines cross the Saint-Julien jalle to draw nearer to the Léoville plateau, before extending over the great Pichon Longueville plateau in the south of the Pauillac appellation. The exceptional richness of the Pauillac appellation is the result of a poor, meagre soil. The rises are formed of gravel over clay, a composition that ensures excellent drainage. It is these Quaternary gravels, known as Garonne gravels, and in particular those of the Günz terrace, the oldest and topographically the highest, that account for the quality of the finest vineyards of the Haut-Médoc.