2005 Grand-Puy-Lacoste

The team here harvested both Grand Puy Lacoste and Haut Batailley from September 21 until October 4, stopping twice for a half-day: once due to rain and the second time to do more leaf-pulling. Director Francois-Xavier Borie did a bit of reverse osmosis for the cabernet in 2007 but avoided saignee, then fermented a bit cooler than usual, with less remontage Both his Grand Puy Lacoste and Haut Batailley will go into bottle with moderate alcohol levels because, he said, "we can't have too much alcohol for the structure of the vintage."

The team here harvested both Grand Puy Lacoste and Haut Batailley from September 21 until October 4, stopping twice for a half-day: once due to rain and the second time to do more leaf-pulling. Director Francois-Xavier Borie pointed out that Grand Puy Lacoste has been totally transformed since the 1970s. "We replanted half the property in the late '70s and early '80s with a root stock that ripens its fruit earlier. And now we're benefiting from maturing vines: the average age of the vines is currently 38 years." Borie noted that he has introduced a double triage system (i.e., fruit is sorted before and after it has been destemmed) at both Grand Puy Lacoste and Haut-Batailley as of the 2006 harvest, and he believes that the more precise selection yields considerably purer fruit. Both wines in 2006 contain a higher than usual percentage of cabernet sauvignon.

Director Francois-Xavier Borie kept the fermentation temperatures to 28oC due to the high potential alcohol of the 2005 vintage. "The extraction came easily, and we were very careful not to extract tannins from the pips." Rather than overextracting and getting too much tannin, Borie said the estate used 12% press wine, which "brought more complexity, like adding salt and pepper." This was a strategy shared by a number of producers in the Medoc: extract gently and then decide how much high-quality press wine to blend back into the wine. (All evidence suggests that those who practiced more extractive vinification were left with lower-quality press wine that added little to the blend.) Borie noted that the cabernet was better than the merlot in 2005, and that the latter variety, which came in at potential alcohol up to 14.2%, gave a jammy style of wine. "We wanted to keep our normal style, even in a very ripe vintage like 2005."