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The 2018 Bordeaux Barrels Diary: Valandraud, Canon-La Gaffelière, Troplong Mondot, Canon, Clos Fourtet (Wine Spectator)

Wine Spectator senior editor James Molesworth is in France for his 2018 vintage Bordeaux barrel tastings. While there, he's visiting the châteaus of some of the region's top estates, as well as some up-and-coming new producers.

While Clos Fourtet seemingly hums along, owner MatthieuCuvelier is nonetheless making some tweaks behind the scenes. Ten percent of thevineyard base here now lies fallow—no small number when you have only 49 acres. In addition, new vats have been brought in to help with smallervinification lots as the parcels are broken down into finer and finer details. Thewinemaking team is playing with a couple of amphorae. And for Les Grandes Murailles,Stéphane Derenoncourt and Jean-Claude Berrouet are now the consulting duo,replacing Michel Rolland who still works with Cuvelier on Côte de Baleau.

"The microclimate of the Right Bank was perfect in '18," jokes Cuvelier after I tell him he's my first stop on the Right Bank this year. Alas, mildew pressure was an issue here as well—there was no escaping it.

"But after the mildew, there was no hydric stress during thedry summer," he says. "We could choose the date to pick, at each property andin each parcel. It was two extremes. The result you can see for yourself."

The 2018 Côte de Baleau St.-Emilion (90/10 Merlot and Cabernet Franc)offers a warm and fleshy core of plum and cherry preserve flavors, with asubtle but building chalky minerality through the finish. The pure Merlot 2018 Château Les Grandes Murailles is dreamy, with a focused beam of plum sauce and bittercherry flavors that are purer and racier than the Baleau, all buttressed byvery fine minerality that runs from start to finish.

At Clos Fourtet, yieldswere a decent 2.4 tons per acre, a noticeable step up from the 1.8 tons per acre at Baleau. "We started biodynamics at Clos Fourter earlier, and so Ithink the vineyard is a little better balanced at this point than Baleau," saysCuvelier. "But there is really no way to know for sure."

The 2018 Clos Fourtet St.-Emiliongrand vin is intense, ripe and layered, yet remainssupple and alluring in feel, with anise and chalky minerality infusingthe core of beguiling dark plum and boysenberry flavors.

Cuvelier's Left Bank estate of Poujeaux has turned in afine value in 2018, ripe and succulent, with cassis and tobacco notes backed by a prettyecho or warm earth through the finish.

There aren't many Left and Right Bank châteaus under thesame ownership and winemaker, so I was curious to get Nicolas Audebert's read on the vintage when I arrivde at Château Canon.

"The date of mildew pressure was different: The Right Bankwas finished with it earlier than the Left Bank, by a couple of weeks," says Audebert of the viticultural fight that defined the 2018 vintage."You have biodynamic, organic, conventional farming, and all had problems in'18. The pressure was incredible. You had to be in your vineyard every day, noexaggeration. If you took off on Friday and came back Monday, you would bebehind big time. And you can't catch up by just spraying more, whatever you'respraying. If you didn't make the spray at the right time, you were in bigtrouble."

The 2018 Château Canon St.-Emilion is tightly focused, very fresh in feel, withits minerality at both the start and the finish, rather than just peekingthrough at the end. The fruit is all seduction, with plum and licorice notesdraping over the minerality with a cashmere feel. The 2018 ChâteauBerliquetSt.-Emilion continuesthe evolution here since the estate changed hands in 2016, with solid focus anddepth and a slightly more floral profile than the Canon.

Audebert opened many eyes with his unencumbered approachfor Château Canon, beginning with the 2015 vintage. I have been wondering if thesame might happen at the Margaux property of Rauzan-Ségla (another of Canon's sister properties, all owned bythe Wertheimer family of Chanel). The answer is a resounding yes in 2018 (thoughif you note my 2016 review, it has been ticking up). The 2018 Rauzan-Ségla Margaux offers a very pureprofile of plum and cassis, with that cashmere feel yet extra flashes ofwoodspice, lilac and incense swirling through as well. It's almost weightless infeel—a rarity for a young Bordeaux. As dramatic asthe shift was at Canon a couple vintages back, this is just as eye-opening.Rauzan-Ségla will be one of the rabbits to chase this en primeur season.

With his dedication to organic growing now well-established,I wanted to see how Count Stephan von Neipperg's vineyards handled the mildewassault of 2018. They weren't spared, but there was this little nugget: "At La Mondotte, we got the highest yields we have evergotten in '18," Neipperg says. "We got [2.9 tons per acre]! At La Mondotte! (The site is historicallylow-yielding.) And this was the worst year I have ever seen for mildew."

"The end in '18 was the best part. You could do what youwanted—pick Sept. 10 or Sept. 20 or Sept. 30," he says. "You could make afresh style, you could make a big style. We harvested slowly, plot by plot, buteverything in just two weeks, circling the vineyards like an eagle and takingwhat we wanted when we wanted."

The result is yet again another portfolio of classicallystyled wines that showcase beams of pure fruit against a backdrop of fineminerality, with an emphasis on elegance and balance. The 2018 La Mondotte St.-Emilion isthe fullest display, with gorgeous boysenberry and plum fruit lined with lightfloral and chalky mineral notes and a long, long, long finish. The 2018 Château Canon-La Gaffelière St.-Emilion is as blue-chip as it gets (the 2015 wasWine Spectator's No. 2 wine of2018), offering a layered and lush feel that stays racy, with cassis and cherrypreserve notes that glide through a refined, mineral-tinged finish. The 2018Clos de l'Oratoire St.-Emilion has a solid core of plum and black currant fruit with a niceswath of tobacco at the end. The workhorse 2018 Château d'AiguilheCastillon Côtes de Bordeaux is one of Bordeaux'sbest values, a twenty-something-dollar bottling that captures the house style of purecherry, plum and anise notes all inlaid with sparkly acidity on an open, accessible frame.

From there it was on to Troplong Mondot, where there is sucha dramatic change going on here, I wanted to follow up quickly after my recentvisit in December.Director Aymeric de Gironde now has his 2018 blended (my previous tasting was ofseparate lots), and the results are as dramatic a shift as that initial tastingpromised. No sulphur was added until after malolactic was complete, and a lighterhand was taken throughout the vinification in general, with the percentage ofnew oak dropped to 60 percent. The wine was coaxed gently through the élevageto this point, which de Gironde felt was affecting the wine's initial reticencein the glass.

"We took such care protecting it from oxygen, especiallyafter the late and low sulphur addition, that it has taken a long time for thewine to reveal itself," he says.

But after a few minutes, the change in the glass isnoticeable. The 2018 Château Troplong Mondot St.-Emilionevolves from a primal ball of slightly dark plum fruit to a range ofbrighter red fruit flavors flecked liberally with floral notes and backed by adistinct flinty minerality. There's a density that is in line with thevintage's overall profile, but the texture is incredibly silky.

"The clay we have in our soils drank all that early waterand allowed the vines to ripen slowly through the summer, without a maturity blockageduring the drought. But I still decided to harvest early. We startedSept. 7 and we were 75 percent done in the first week. Thatdecision was made to protect the freshness of the fruit and preserve the cleanaromatics," says de Gironde.

At Château Laroque there is just as much change going on. Bybeing one of the two biggest estates in St.-Emilion, effecting any change atLaroque is a heavy lift. When the Beaumartin family owners tapped DavidSuire for the task in 2015, though, they made a smart choice. Suire has cut histeeth working on Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarosse and Larcis Ducasse with NicolasThienpont since 2002 (and he continues to work on those two estates).

The 203-acre estate (with 151 acres under vine) islocated east of the town, where the limestone plateau comes to an end,next door to Peter Sisseck's Château Rocheyron. A rare large, contiguous parcel inSt.-Emilion, the vines cover both plateau and some slopes, with the classic limestonesoil in one section, a chunk of brown and orange clay, and then slopes ofyellow and white clay. Vines here are old, as the estate was replanted en massefollowing the frost of 1956. Suire has taken the more modern approach, breakingthe vineyard down into smaller parcels, vinifying them separately and making aselection of three wines—just about 40 percent now goes to the grand vin, which isaged in a mix of barrel and wood vat to focus on the fruit.

The 2018 Château Laroque St.-Emilion is a 97/3 Merlot and Cabernet Franc blend. It has some power—afunction of the darker clay soil portion—giving it a warm feel to its well ofthick plum and blackberry sauce flavors. It's just lightly toasted around theedges and offers a nicely rounded feel overall, with a subtle chalky spinepeeking through the finish. Gone are the gutsy ganache and mulled spice notesof previous vintages such as 2010 and '12, replaced with an increasing sense offreshness that began with the '15 and '16 vintages, without sacrificing agingpotential. Retail price on the 2016 was just $30. Folks, you may want to add this to your shopping list.

It's always fun to taste in a garage. It's even more fun totaste in the garage.Valandraud is where the garagiste movement began, and Jean-Luc Thunevin isstill humming along, consulting for a wheelbarrow full of estates while workingwith his longtime partner, Murielle, on his own wines.

"Such a crazy year," says the mild-mannered Thunvein,touching his brow to pantomime shock. "But in the end we have richness withtenson and freshness. We could pick whenever we wanted, for any style. It's abit of '09 and '10 and a bit of '15 and '16. I've never seen a year thiscrazy."

A couple of noteworthy new clients in Thunevin's stableinclude Trimoulet; the 2018 Château TrimouletSt.-Emilionoffers intense plum sauce and fig fruitflavors with a solidly toasty and grippy back end. There's also Le Moulin,a Pomerol from a tiny 3.7-acre parcel; the 2018 Château Le Moulin Pomerol is soft and very alluring infeel, with plum cake, pudding and smoke notes. The 2018 Château d'Uza Graves is a rare Left Bank consulting gig for Thunevin, with its 90/10 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlotblend showing an intense and muscular tar, dark earth, licorice root andsteeped currant profile.

As for Thunevin's own wine, the 2018 Valandraud St.-Emilion drips with fruit,offering a range of raspberry and blackberry compote flavors that are lush atfirst, but still juicy and very much alive as they move through the licoricesnap and graphite-tinted finish. It's not as showy as it was in its earlyvintages—it's just a bit more reserved, but no less serious. Like the manhimself.

While the garagiste movement has come and gone, its originalbad-boy instigator has adapted and changed, and perhaps even mellowed a bitalong the way, while his wine is arguably better than ever—relying on purityand focus rather than just power. In addition, if the garagiste movement hasleft anything behind in St.-Emilion, it is the energy and desire for constantchange and innovation. This Right Bank appellation has a groundswell of viticulturally progressive estates—Berliquet, Troplong Mondot, Beau-Séjour Bécot,La Dominique, Laroque,Bélair-Monange, Pavie andmore. St.-Emilion's penchant for changemight not make it the best AOC in Bordeaux, but it's easily the most exciting.

You can follow James Molesworth on Instagram, at Instagram.com/JMolesworth1, and on Twitter, at Twitter.com/JMolesworth1.

source https://www.winespectator.com/blogs/show/id/2018-Bordeaux-Barrel-Tastings-Valandraud-Canon-Gaffeliere-Fourtet-Mondotte

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