2002 L'Évangile

The temperature in the vines reached 110 degrees in August, said manager Jean-Pascal Vazart, and the leaves dried out and fell off. "But the vines on clay produced superb fruit, not at all cooked and with no loss of elegance. It's not a superripe, hot wine, like one might imagine." In fact, Vazart summarized, "the young 2003 has the freshness of '99 and '01 with the fine-grained tannins of 2000. It's certainly un millesime a part L'Evangile started picking on September 1 but, according to Vazart, devoted the first couple of days to "cleaning up the bad stuff." The harvest was over by September 11. The vinifications were easy, Vazart went on. "We worked more like the Medocaines, extracting quickly at the beginning and then stopping our extraction. But we still did a relatively long cuvaison By the middle of October everything was racked, sulfited and in the barrel. In fact the wine has already had more than five months in new oak but it doesn't show it because it has enough structure to support the wood."

Manager Jean-Pascal Vazart noted that the wind that blew during the latter half of September concentrated the acids in addition to the sugars, and thus he felt that the 2002 would be even better after more of the acidity had precipitated out. The wine is carrying a lofty 13.5% alcohol, with even the 24% cabernet franc component averaging 13.2%. Vazart described the vintage as fruity and very fresh, whereas 2001 (on its finings at the time of my visit and thus unavailable for tasting), with its very ripe merlot, is fatter. This chateau carried out three passes through the vines during the summer, including a final one at the end of August and beginning of September to eliminate the beginnings of botrytis. According to Vazart, the result of this labor-intensive work, as well as the leaf-pulling that is now routine here, is a wine with no vegetility and no dryness to its tannins.