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“The season started early at the end of March, like 2020,” Olivier Berrouet told me as we tasted in their cuverie. “We had some frost at the beginning of April, but we were not affected. The problem was during flowering at the start of June. [Berrouet nips out and prints of a graph that uncovers one of the major obstacles of the 2021 season that few winemakers spoke about]. You can see that on the exact day of mi-fleuraison [halfway through the critical flowering stage] we had 16.8mm of rain and 11.6mm the following day. Consequently, the Merlot suffered a lot of coulure. We lost 25%, though we managed to control it. The lack of sunshine was a big problem, less than 250 hours compared to the previous year. It was the key point. Bud break was at the same as last year, but whereas we picked 30 September in 2021, we picked on 9 September in 2020. So, given that average temperatures and rainfall are not dissimilar, how do you explain this three-week gap and the 13.3% alcohol compared to 14.5% in 2020? It means there was a very slow growth cycle, and so when we started to taste the grapes in early September, they were unripe but not green. Pyrazines had been burned off during the summer as the temperature was not bad. The luck we had in 2021 is that we were not pressured by the excess quantity of sugar that forced picking dates. We harvested 70% of the blend before the rain and 30% after, mostly right at the end [to maximise maturity]. With our blue clay soils, if we don’t harvest ripe, then we miss something. In 2021, we embraced the typicité of the vintage, the wine is more delicate and elegant, and we went in that direction, seeking balance in the wine. It’s not a tannic vintage. I was talking with my father [Jean-Claude Berrouet], and we both found it difficult to find a comparable vintage.” I asked whether there were any alterations with respect to the vinification. “We blended to build the mid-palate,” he answers, “looking for consistency and a structure to lengthen the wine. The malolactic was very quick, so the wine shut down drastically in December. We did a very small 0.3% chaptalisation to reach around 13% alcohol, and there was no saignée as the berries were quite small.”

2021 Petrus

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