I pull out a bottle of this every couple of months. It is a wine I know and love and have accumulated enough bottles that I now have to think about whether or not, in actuarial terms, I have bought too many for my expected lifespan. As first world problems go, this one is a goodie.
I loved this at the VCC tasting, and among the younger wines we tasted, this was one of my favorites. It contains more Cabernet Franc than the usual blend, which gives it a slightly different structure and also a slightly different taste.
We pulled the bottle and then poured it immediately. I was struck immediately by the fruit, the heavy florals and also that oyster shell minerality, a hallmark of this particular vintage. Yet for all its intensity, it still showed lightness and an easy personality that made it easy to reach for second and third glasses.
Balance was close to impeccable, and the finish long and layered. Although it is a wonderful drink now, it will, of course benefit from several more years in the bottle.
Your remark about the blend made me curious, so I went to the VCC website and looked. I’m not entirely sure what “usual” meant, as the website included only recent vintages, but in the last 25 vintages, excluding 2003 because the website didn’t include the final blend, the 2014 blend of 80% merlot, 19% cab franc and 1% cab sauvignon is the median blend. It’s the identical blend to the 2015. The highest cab franc percentage was 2018 and 2004, both 30%, with 2011 close by with 29% cab franc and 1% cab sauvignon. The first decade of the 2000s featured relatively low merlot content: only 2000 and 2005 (80%) and 2009 (88%) got into the 80% range. The lowest was 2008 at 65%. The highest merlot percentage in the set was 2013 at 92%. After a run of high merlot years (2009, 2010, 2012 and 2013), they seem to have settled into having a merlot content about 77-80% with the balance some mix of cab franc and cab sauvignon. Higher merlot years were 2016 and 2020 at 85%.
I struggled to find any pattern to the blend and the reputation of the wine and/or vintage. I guess they took what nature gave them.
Chris,
I was going by Neal Martin’s recent article, where he wrote the 2014 had 30% Cabernet Franc.
It certainly seemed to have that slightly herbal quality which I associate with the grape.
A typo maybe? Whose is the question. The VCC website gives the 80/19/1 blend I noted, and, not surprisingly, other sources (Jeff Leve, Neal’s original review in the Wine Advocate, Galloni’s review in Vinous) follow that.
Not surprisingly, I always gravitated toward those vintages that have a higher cut of Cabernet franc. My two favorite vintages of the prior decade are in fact, 2011 and 2014. And I really love 2004z. I did not know, and will be interested to find out, whether the 2014 in fact has 30%. Regardless, is a leaner, more complex, cool vintage wine compared to the larger scaled 2010, 2015 and 2018. If @crickey is correct, I am completely surprised to hear 2018 has 30% Cabernet franc, it shows more heavy merlot.
…edit to add (as I didn’t read @crickey 's posts initially)… if the cited number is a “median” blend as noted, it only has 2015 in common. It’s possible someone did a copy/paste and duplicated the data for 2014 and 2015.
For the “median blend,” I took the data set I had (1998-2023, no 2003), took the median for the merlot percentage, which was 80%, and separately the median for the cab franc percentage, which was 19%; the cab sauvignon was simply the remainder. It was just happenstance that the math happened to line up with the 2014 vintage.
Because of the oddity that 2014 and 2015 had the same blend percentages, I am open to the possibility that there was some kind of error at the chateau. Jeff Leve used the 80/19/1 blend figures for the 2014 in his April 2015 review, i.e., before the 2015 grapes were even picked, so a copy-paste error, if there is one, would more likely affect the 2015 percentages.
Thanks for the check-in, Mark. I bought four bottles a few years ago, but have yet to pop one. Sounds like Now wouldn’t be a bad time to reduce my cellar Qty by 1.
Anyone had the 2006 recently? I have a singleton of that one …
As a follow-up on the earlier posts, I asked Neal Martin about the 30% cab franc figure he used in his most recent review. He essentially said it was a typo, and Vinous updated the note with a percentage of 19% to match the figure given on the VCC website. His note doesn’t make as much sense as it did before, but given the lower alcohol and lower Ph level, I would believe that the 2014 might show a more herbal/herbaceous quality than other recent vintages.
