1999 Smith Haut Lafitte
France
Pessac Léognan Grand Cru Classé, Graves
Bordeaux
Red
Bordeaux Blend
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2019 - 2029
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Florence Cathiard describes this property's 2001 as "a wine of finish, not of attack." All of the malolactic fermentation here takes place in barriques, and the lees are stirred until December. The Cathiards picked their white grapes later than usual in 2001 and had the last of them in just before a storm on September 22.
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Due to "fingers of clay that promote water retention," Smith Haut Lafitte did not suffer unduly from the late-summer drought in 2000, according to Florence Cathiard. Still, the very thick skins of the vintage resulted in an extremely high index of polyphenols. The new vintage was the first made entirely in the estate new oak fermenters; the use of these small, conical vats allowed the estate to extract slowly. "Our red revolution started with the 2000," noted Cathiard, "but our white began to change with the '98. We used to think that we needed high acidity for the white wine to age, but then we noticed how fresh the '95 was three or four years after the harvest. The fruit that year had been picked very ripe, a good degree higher than usual and with lower acidity. We thought at the time that the wine wouldn't hold in bottle, but we were wrong. Now we look for almost overripe fruit each year, and it has become clear to us that the wine ages on richness, ripeness and overall balance rather than acid level."
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Daniel and Florence Cathiard, now in their tenth year at Smith Haut Lafitte, continue to refine viticulture and winemaking at this topnotch estate. With the '98 vintage, there are now small oak tanks for fermenting the red wine (small tanks are used to ferment each parcel of white wine). There are now three separate sorting tables, including one on which less-than-perfect fruit is eliminated after the clusters pass through the destemming machine. The Cathiards have been using their own compost since 1994. "This was a chemical desert when we came," noted Daniel. The Cathiards describe the 1999 cabernet sauvignon as rather tough, lacking in fat and difficult to extract. As a result, the late-picked cabernet was eliminated from the grand vin
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