2013 Duo de Conseillante

Earlier this year, Managing Director Jean-Valmy Nicolas invited me to the first-floor tasting room to taste through a comprehensive line-up of both La Conseillante and their second wine, Duo du Conseillante. These notes are augmented by those taken at recent private tastings, including an excellent soirée at “Ten Trinity” organized by Omar Kahn for his “International Business and Wine” series of dinners in March. I have also included some notes taken from my Pomerol tome.

I was deeply impressed with both wines at La Conseillante. Poor weather during the flowering was especially hard on the older vines. Yields are down about 25% across the board. Warm weather during most of the summer baked off the green notes. Unusually high temperatures in late September triggered an outbreak of botrytis. The estate doubled their number of vineyard workers. La Conseillante is one of the few estates I know of where macerations were fairly long, although temperatures were kept low. The malos were done mostly in cement, although some smaller lots saw oak. Blends were finalized in February. La Conseillante typically included 4-5% press wine, although Winemaker Jean-Michel Laporte told me he planned to use no more than 2-3% in 2013. Both the Duo de Conseillante and Conseillante are aging in 50% new French oak barrels.