Bordeaux Primer Part 2
The following is part 2 of a cellar diary/travelogue written by my friend Morgan Peterson. A Masters of Wine candidate and future winemaker, Morgan is currently in Bordeaux continuing his hands-on wine education. His father, Joel Peterson, is the winemaker and co-founder of Ravenswood.
As one goes farther south down the Haut-Medoc, the wines tend towards greater plushness. The smallest of the four great communes, St. Julien is immediately south of Pauillac and the vineyards run into each other. I stood this morning with one foot in the vineyards of Pichon-Lalande and the other in the great vineyards belonging to Ch. Leoville Las Cases. The wines from St. Julien are, as would be expected, a seeming hybrid between the exotic Pauillacs and the refined wines of Margaux. As a result, I also find them to be the most difficult to identify blind. The great estates of St. Julien can be roughly divided into two types. The river-front properties defined by the Leovilles Leoville las Cases, Leoville,-Poyferre, and the slightly more southern Leoville Barton are on the river gravels similar, but not quite as deep, as those of Pauillac. Just south still are the great wines of around the town of Beycheville, the chateau of the same name and Ch. Ducru-Beaucaillou. The wines do get slightly more finessed as one is farther south. A separate section still, the inland section which begins with Gruaud-Larose, and works inland to Lagrange, La Tour Carnet and the village of St. Laurent. I need to taste these wines more to really describe their character, as I normally am happier (unjustly) to spend a dollar on Pauillac or Margaux (perhaps, silly Morgan, this is why you cannot identify St. Julien blind yet).
Below St. Julien lies a rather large gap of villages that make wines simply of Haut-Medoc status. The gravel mounds are lower, the water table higher, and the resulting wines are less complex. These villages, Cussac, Lamarque, Arcins, and Soussans, are, as Hugh Johnson says the mezzo-forte between the adante of St. Julien and the allegro of Margaux. There is a reason why Hugh Johnson is one of the best wine writers.
Clustered around the town of Margaux is the first-growth Chateau Margaux. Once in a bit of disrepair the purchase of the estate by the Greek Mentzelopouos family has reinvigorated the place. There are a number of super-seconds here as well, though Chateau Palmer, technically a third growth, leads the charge. Brane-Cantenac, Rauzan-Segla, Boyd-Cantenac, and Durfort-Vivens are not far behind. More on Margaux after I actually spend some time there.
White Wine harvest at Ch. Lynch Bages.
We harvest the first grapes of the vintage today. By we, I mean that I watched while others loaded the Muscadelle and Sauvignon Blanc into the presses, putting half of the grapes through a crusher-destemmer first. Despite the best efforts of Sylvie Cazes, one of the owners of Lynch-Bages, working in France is not an option due to some rather intense regulatory processes. As our friend Steve Ledbetter noted, the French are the only people that are willing to turn down free labor right now.
Since the area of Pauillac, close to the river is reserved exclusively for red varietals, the whites are sourced from the more clay-rich and poorer draining soils inland in the commune, outside the village of St. Saveur. The grapes are practically interplanted, with each block having a small percentage of each varietal. The total 4 ha (10 acres) of white varietals are surprisingly even in their breakdown between the three cepages. All are trained in the typically low and dense fashion of Bordeaux, with each vine rendering between 5-8 clusters. To give an idea of the density of the planting for a Cru Classe of Bordeaux, compared to Caliornia, take the following into account:
Vines are planted at a density of 10,000 vines per hectare here. A hectare is 2.5 acres. This means that roughly 4,000 vines are planted in an acre. Bedrock Zinfandel, our vineyard in Sonoma, is planted at a density of 700-900 vines per acre depending on the block. Our Cabernet, planted on 10 by 4 spacing to a GDC trellising system is the most densely planted stuff on the property at just less than 1200 vines per acre. The average vine age for the whites here is close to 45 years, and the vineyard tends to show it, with some signs of virus and eutypa.
Vinification practice differs depending on the white grape varietal. Muscadelle and Semillon are put on longer press cycles, and allowed to sit on their skins, under a good cover of CO2 and sulfur for three hoursextracting a bit more from their skins. This is understandable, as the pulp of Sauvignon Blanc is already quite flavorful compared the varietals of Semillon and Muscadelle. As a result of this, the Sauvignon also undergoes a higher percentage of fruit being destemmed prior to the press cycle. On a tangent, I would also like to say that the SB here tastes little like what I know from California or Australia. The juice is musky, almost like Muscat mated with ones of its great grandparents. It is complex, delicious stuff with great acidity and brightness. Also to my surprise was the potential alcohol the grapes were harvested at. Refractometer readings during the crushing process showed the grapes having enough sugar to ferment to about 11.5 percent alcohol for the Muscadelle. Readings for the first batch of Sauvignon Blanc were about a point higher. For the fermentation junkies, the other readings were as follows:
Sugar g/l: 219
Free SO2: 33
Total SO2: 69
Sulfuric Acid: 5.50 g/l
PH: 3.12
Malic Acid: 3.7 g/l
Nitrogen: 86 mg/L
In other words, it is pretty zesty stuff. For those of us who are used to seeing sauvignon more in the range of 13-14.5 percent alcohol, these are certainly refreshing numbers.
Unlike I have seen elsewhere, Lynch-Bages prefers to add only enzyme after the press cycle is complete, and no effort is made to separate free-run from the press juice. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just less interventionist. Though there is a lot of use of dry-ice to provide protection from the air, and also the addition of bisulfite at the press for the same purpose, the winemaking team seems a little less afraid of oxygen than that at Hardys Tintara in Australia.
