2003 Angélus

The young 2005 here is a knockout, offering a combination of sheer intensity with inner-mouth floral complexity and suave tannins that I have never seen before from this property. Strict control of crop levels in conjunction with drought conditions resulted in very small berries in 2005, said maitre de chai Emmanuelle Fulchy d'Aligny, who added that even though the grapes had little juice, they were not dehydrated. Still, a bit of saignee was done in 2005 and the wine was vinified at slightly lower temperature than usual. The very high IPT of 85 was actually lower than that of the 2004 here, and the pH of 3.72 is in the low-healthy range for Angelus. Fulchy d'Aligny summarized: "It's the first time we have had this combination of concentration and freshness at this point of the wine's life. In fact, in 2005 the merlot had even more freshness than the cabernet franc." In April, the young Angelus shocked me with its sheer drinkability and class. I had expected to find a more obviously tannic and extracted wine, but there is nothing heavy or forced about it.

Hubert de Bouard harvested during the first half of October, bringing in a crop of 39 hectoliters per hectare after having thinned the clusters on the merlot vines in July. "The old vines produced five bunches per vine rather than a normal two or three," he told me, "and the young vines would have produced 20 or more if we had let them." Angelus weighs in at 13.9% alcohol, with an IPT of 90. "The skins were thoroughly ripe but the insides of the grapes only moderately ripe," Bouard told me. "We actually had more seed tannins in 2003, but they were riper than those of 2004." Accordingly, Bouard extracted energetically early in the fermentation, then very gently later on.

Hubert de Bouard faced an interesting challenge in 2003. He had hugely ripe cabernet franc with excellent balance but he had to be careful how much he included in the blend. He ultimately decided on 50% cabernet franc and 50% merlot, "because 60% or more of cabernet franc would have made a monster, and a wine that would not have been typical for Angelus." Three-quarters of the franc was harvested during the first several days of October, he told me, and the potential alcohol ranged as high as 15%, or higher than the estate's merlot. Bouard did a full extraction of the cabernet franc because, he said, the pips were brown and totally ripe (the index of polyphenols is an extremely high 87). The blend today has alcohol just under 14%, a pH of 3.85 and decent acidity of 3.2 grams.