2024 Réserve de la Comtesse

Nicolas Glumineau, director at the picturesque Second Growth, greeted me as usual with some choice sounds wafting from his Naim audio system in the tasting room. I keep telling him to get a proper turntable. Hopefully one will be installed in the château building that is currently under extensive renovation.

“We have half the crop because we lost Merlot due to mildew pressure and it had to be rigourously sorted. Plus, we had coulure on all grape varieties that required sorting. When we picked the Cabernet Sauvignon, we were anticipating higher yields because we had one-third fewer berries per bunch. So we cropped at 20 hl/ha, but since there was less compression inside the bunches, we could wait for phenolic ripeness as there was better air circulation. There was hardly any rot apart from the last day, which was sorted out. We picked from September 23 until October 9. We did half to one-third less volume of pumping over compared to average, more or less just wetting the cap, so we did much more maceration than extraction. We used 16% vin de presse for the Grand Vin, as much as the last two years, with no saignée because for me it is not a good method of extraction. There is never a good reason to overextract. The 2024 vintage makes me think of 2008, but we vinified it in a different way.”