1939 & 1950 Cheval Blanc

BY NEAL MARTIN | DECEMBER 09, 2019

There is always a frisson of excitement in coming eyeball to eyeball with a prewar bottle of Bordeaux, especially one from a vintage dismissed and written out of history. The quality of the 1939 vintage was trivial against the backdrop of war breaking out across Europe, though for the record it purportedly produced light wines, better for whites than reds. Examples are hardly ever seen nowadays. Apart from a couple of Sauternes, the only one I had tasted was a 1939 Rauzan-Ségla at last year’s vertical. But I recently attended a dinner where the highlight was a bottle of 1939 Cheval Blanc. I was intrigued. Why this particular vintage when there are so many other legendary years to choose from?