Château Smith Haut-Lafitte 2021

Critic scores

• James Suckling99
• Wine Enthusiast99
• Vinous98
• Jeb Dunnuck94
• Decanter93

The 2021 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 86/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: Frost, mildew, then a cool summer brought back Bordeaux of old: taut, vibrant wines, shorter but elegant.

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

A very open nose of fresh red fruits, raspberry, strawberry, and black fruits, blackberries, blackcurrant. Hints of sweet spices, liquorice, tobacco leaf. Complex and fresh. On the palate, it is well balanced with a good freshness and great deal of vivacity. Good concentration with a nice and soft texture, the wine offers a perfect harmony. Very lively, it is full of energy and delivers a great length. Nice complexity of flavors ranging from fresh fruits to spices, cigar box and hint of smoky minerality, faithful to the terroir of Graves. A great and complex wine between harmony and smoothness.

Blend of the 2021 vintage

Figures from the 2021 sheet

• 22 hl/haYield
• 48 yrsVine age

Winemaking

Vinification as whole berries in small wooden vats at 28°C, very gentle extraction carried out by hand punching down.

Ageing

Aging: 18 months in barrels (60% are new barrels produced in our in-house cooperage), with aging on lees. After being racked a single time, wine is aged according to its profile.

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).