Château Smith Haut-Lafitte 2013

The 2013 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 78/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: Coulure, mildew, then rain during the harvest: a light vintage, ready to drink.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Pessac-Léognan. 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 Smith Haut Lafitte rouge 2013 has a beautiful, bright red robe with lovely bluish glints. The nose is expressive and complex, with fresh, very Bordelais aromatic notes of red fruit (strawberry, raspberry, red cherry), spice, clove, aniseed, liquorice and blond tobacco. The palate has good concentration with a tannin texture that is both unctuous and structuring. The attack is balanced, the mid-palate unctuous, and the long, aromatic finish offers lovely notes of fresh red fruit, spice, star anise, aniseed and more terroir-driven notes of gunflint. A wine of great elegance and complexity.

Blend of the 2013 vintage

Figures from the 2013 sheet

• 13 % vol.Alcohol
• 38 yrsVine age
• 120,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

During tank filling, the grapes are chilled, encouraging a pre-fermentation maceration in an aqueous phase favourable to the exchange of colour and aroma. Fermentations then begin naturally with the indigenous yeasts of the cellar.

Ageing

18 months in barrels (60% new barrels made in our own in-house cooperage), ageing on lees, a single racking, then ageing adjusted for each wine.

Terroir

The terroir has such a strong personality that it gave the region its name: "Les Graves". These graves are an accumulation of alluvial, sandy and stony deposits laid down on a Tertiary limestone subsoil by the turbulent rivers and glaciers of the early Quaternary era, subsequently reshaped into gravel rises by erosion. At Smith Haut Lafitte, the soil is made up of one of the rare Günzian gravel rises, thick and ochre in colour, a sign of its richness in iron oxide. This soil is of high quality for viticulture because it is at once free-draining, very poor and warm at the surface, while maintaining a degree of coolness and moisture at depth (clay or limestone).