2004 Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

The big news here is that Hubert de Bouard, owner of L'Angelus, was brought in to consult beginning with the 2006 harvest. Technical director Thomas Do-Chi-Nam gave a clear explanation of the challenges of the 2006 harvest. "In the hot weather of early September, some of the grape skins burned in the sun, and this made them a bit fragile and could have compromised some of the merlot in particular," he said. "Then the ripeness happened quickly in our various blocks." Do-Chi-Nam said the estate ultimately declassified more merlot than usual, opting to retain "the sappy, round, fresh lots." He noted that Pichon-Lalande had coulure in both its cabernet and merlot vines, so the estate began with 10% fewer berries in 2006 than in 2005. Production was a reasonable 41 hectoliters per hectare.

The 2005 Pichon-Lalande was one of the more surprising wines of the vintage in April. Made in a rather polite, highly aromatic style, it struck me as almost more Margaux than Pauillac in character. For his part, technical director Thomas Do-Chi-Nam described vintage 2004 as "very Pauillac," and the new 2005 as "very Pichon-Lalande." The fruit in '05 was ripe and nicely concentrated, he explained, with the same number of grape clusters as usual but with smaller berries and thorough ripeness promising a lot of tannins. "We pick for red fruits, not jammy fruits," noted Do-Chi-Nam. "Too many people tried to extract everything; but that's not our way of thinking." Incidentally, this wine features a high percentage of cabernet and less merlot than usual, a formula I usually associate with the best vintages here.

Much of the quality of the 2004 Pichon-Lalande is attributable to the strict green harvest that was carried out in July, asserts marketing director Gildas d'Ollone. The estate harvested over a period of three weeks, stopping a couple of times to wait for more thorough ripeness, and ultimately produced a wine rich in polyphenols (IPT of 73), with 13% alcohol, a rather high pH of 3.86, but sound acidity of 3.4 grams per liter. The most important thing is that even the tannins in the pips were ripe, noted Ollone. Pichon-Lalande used saignee to concentrate the must and also made some use of vacuum evaporation.