2021 Le Petit Ducru de Ducru Beaucaillou

“The 2021 vintage was ‘The Crunch’ – the big fight in rugby,” proprietor Bruno Borie told me. “We had to fight the two waves of frost over two weekends. It’s always on the weekend. It was the same in 2022. We used candles and large portable fans, though the vines next to the estuary were relatively unaffected. I recall my father in the 1960s waking up early in the morning for frost, and it was always the same areas affected. They were not typical spring frosts, more like freezing waves without a huge variation in temperature, so the candles and fans were not quite so effective since there is less mixing of temperatures. But you have friction with the air molecules that heats the air. Then, we had a lot of rain in June and so we had a serious attack of mildew. Teamwork was very important. We sent people into the vineyard to take off leaves and clusters affected. We brought in 50 additional workers from Andalusia. We started picking on 23 September until 11 October. This year will not be a Merlot vintage as they were more affected by frost and mildew. We sold around 30% to the bulk market. The conical vats allowed us to extract soft tannins, slower and more during the aqueous/earlier phase of the alcoholic fermentation. We have about 12.5% alcohol for the Grand Vin, which is reminiscent of the 1996.”