Day 3 of En Primeur Week

Our final day in Bordeaux begain with an early 0900 appointment at Chateau Cheval Blanc to taste their 2016 offerings.

Cheval Blanc has one of the most impressive buildings in Bordeaux, elegantly teaming the old with the new. Here is a video of their famous fermentation vats which sit above their equally impressive cellar

We tried Quinault L’Enclos, Petite Cheval and the Grand Vin, Cheval Blanc. In terms of investment grade wines, our gaze was firmly set on the Grand Vin and it did not dissappoint, demonstating floral freshness, refined balance and elegance – impressive for a wine with 37% Cabernet Franc. We then tried Chateau D’Yquem (as the wine is also owned by the LVMH super brand) which impressed despite the slight lack of acidity due to lower botrytised acids.

Here is Luci’s summation of the wines:

Following on from Cheval Blanc we travelled in to St Emilion proper and attended a tasting in this glorious part of Bordeaux. Here is Esme’s introduction to St Emilion:

We then traveled to visit our good friend, Jonathan Maltus, at Chateau Teyssier to try their stable of wines, including the very impressive Les Asteries and Le Dome which had lovely spice, chocolate and cassis notes – another wine with substantial Cabernet Franc.

Jonathan was kind enough to give us his take of the vintage and then to answer some questions from Esme.

Jonathan then sugested we lunch at the incredible Le Caffe Cuisine, which we will write more about in a later post! We enjoued a bottle of Bordeaux white, and some excellent oysters and steaks – thanks for the reccomendation, Jonathan! Our final stop was with our good freind Charlie Sichel of Maison Sichel to taste a range of wines across several vintages.

We were delighted that Charlie was good enough to give us Sichel’s take on the vintage and answer a few questions posed by Esme.

Following that we headed over the Bordeaux Airport, to wrestle with Easyjet’s ‘one piece of hold luggage’ policy and flew back to the UK after a tiring but enlightening week. There will be a myriad of opinions on the vintage, but it does seem like the 2016s will provide us with several 99 and 100 point wines in what could be deemed either a very good or an outstanding year – only time will tell. We now hope that the bordelais will be sensible with their pricing to reflect to uplift in yields this year – then we will really be able to determine the value of the vintage!