Warning: arcane
French wine labelling discussion alert.
In the rather stolid rubric of the St Emilion wine
classification system, Château Cheval Blanc is a Premier Grand Cru Classé
A. Some French regions have Grand Cru as
the very top of the quality tree; over in the Médoc in Bordeaux’s left bank, it is the five Premiers Crus who reign
supreme. In St Emilion, however, it
looks as though a committee of strong-minded people couldn’t agree which way to
jump and so went for both. Then, because
so many producers ended up being given the highest accolade of Premier Grand
Cru Classé, they had to divide this top tier into the very top producers, of
which Cheval Blanc is one of four, who are awarded an A rather than an
ignominious B, to round off their official nomenclature.
There are 14 Châteaux on the Premier Grand Cru Classé rung
of the quality ladder, with another 64 properties at the next level down, Grand
Cru Classé. If you are sipping a bottle
of red Burgundy labelled Grand Cru Classé, your nose (if not your wallet)
should tell you that you are at the top of the tree, quality-wise. But if you find the same thing on the label
of your St Emilion, then you are not
supping such rarified nectar (and have not happened on the bargain of the
century either).
If you, probably very wisely, skipped over those first
couple of paragraphs, here’s a quick summary:
Château Cheval Blanc is a bit special.
Like most St Emilion producers, their wines are made from a
blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – but unlike most of their neighbours, they
have no limestone in their soils.
Instead they have plots with a mosaic of soils based on sand, gravel and
clay – in this they have more in common with their near neighbours in Pomerol.
Cheval Blanc’s vineyards are made up of slightly more
Cabernet Franc (58%) than Merlot, which accounts for the remainder. This high proportion of Cabernet Franc also
sets them apart from most of their St Emilion cohort, where Merlot tends to
take the lead role.
Now, you might think that it was a pretty straightforward
task to blend just two varieties to make a wine, but of course it rarely
is.
At Cheval Blanc grapes can end up in
one of four destinations – as part of the “grand vin” Cheval Blanc; second wine,
Le Petit Cheval; their 3rd wine or, finally, sold off in bulk to be
subsumed into generic St Emilion wines.
Château Cheval Blanc covers 39 hectares (that’s around 100
acres) and is made up of 44 different plots, each of which represents one of
the two grape varieties, growing on one of three soil types: sand, gravel or clay. At a recent tasting in London, guided by
Pierre-Olivier Clouet, the impossibly youthful-looking Technical Manager at the
Château, I was able to taste samples from the different parcels from the 2012
vintage: Merlot and Cabernet Franc from
each of three soil types. Now these
wines are a long way from being finished and still have another year or so to
age in barrel before their final fate is decided, from grand vin to bulk
sell-off, so we were not really getting a sneaky peek at Cheval Blanc 2012 –
but it did sort of feel that way.
It was instructive to taste how the same grape variety can
perform so differently on the different soils.
Merlot grown on sand is earthy and metallic with a touch of green
stalkiness. Yet on clay and gravel soils
that unripe, green note disappears and there is a rush of ripe berry fruits
instead. Cabernet Franc followed the
same pattern, with the sandy soils producing the poorest wine, and clay proving
to be the perfect growing medium.
Before we moved on, I couldn’t resist having a go at
blending my own Cheval Blanc 2012 – the core being Cabernet Franc grown on
clay, plus a proportion on gravel, with Merlot from clay soil completing the
picture. Pretty delicious I thought – I
wonder if I’ll get the chance to compare it with the real thing? Of course my slapdash sloshing of wines from
one glass to another is a world away from the minute deliberations that
actually determine the final make-up of the wines. Pierre-Oliver told us that they have never
made a perfect blend of Cheval Blanc, showing what a complex mixture of art and
science go into the blending process.
Having looked at the bones of an as-yet-to-be-born wine, we
then went on to taste the final result from previous vintages of Cheval Blanc
and second wine Le Petit Cheval. We were
comparing wines from 2004 (a cool and wet vintage) with 2010 (a cool and dry
one). Incidentally it’s good to know
that it isn’t just the UK that has had so much lacklustre weather in recent
years. I digress.
Le Petit Cheval 2004 was a beguiling wine, its tannins
beginning to soften at nine years old.
Cheval Blanc from the same year was more imposing, with a solidly built
structure underpinning the fruit, obviously a wine with a long future ahead of
it.
The 2010 wines are clearly close to Pierre-Olivier’s heart
and show great freshness and elegance, but it would be a crime to drink them
any time soon.
And if you would like to squirrel a few bottles away for
some special occasion in the future, what will they set you back? It is both a blessing and a curse of those in
the wine trade that we are often treated to tastings of wines which we could
never afford to drink (or at least I couldn’t).
Deep pockets are required in this game:
Cheval Blanc 2010 is available for upwards of £750 a bottle. My favourite wine from the tasting for
current drinking, Le Petit Cheval 2004 is a snip at around £120.
I returned home and came down to earth with a bump and a
glass of a 10 quid Argentinian red – very delicious it was too.
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