Once again, we have been making our tastings of the wines both from the barrels and from the tanks.

This tasting has  several objectives :

For the wine from the latest harvest : we want to have a judgment on the quality and therefore the processes that we will adopt.

For the wine from the harvest before, which is now in barrels,  we take a sample of every barrel (21 for the 2011) as every barrel comes from a different barrel maker.  Part of the’magic’ of  winemaking, is, that even if a barrel is from the same barrel maker, with the same wood, same heating process, same wine inside, ageing in the same cellar, at the same temperature, same humidity, it can still have a different taste.

Our new barrels

The result of this tasting, that took place last Monday was :

We are very happy on the quality of the 2011, it will be better than the 2010,  which in turn was better even  than the 2009.  We anticipate that 80% of the wine will be made into first wine and we already made some ‘assemblage’ and the results were astonishing. Domaine de Bellevue wine is now becoming an ‘adult’ and begins to have a maturity, a regularity, and a specificity, that augurs that we are truly on the path that we wanted to be on when I decided to make wine in this special place.

To taste the wine from the harvest that took place only two months ago is like taking an exam,  you are both the examiner and the person that wants to pass!  We are very happy with the quality of the 2012 as it was a very difficult vintage.  The press say that it is a ‘winemakers vintage’, yes, but it is also a winemaker AND terroir vintage : the terroir commands everything, especially in difficult years like 2012.

I leave you with the comments of Julien Belle, our oenologist :

Tank 1 : ‘Belle intensite, nez fruits sauvages, notes de mie de pain, bouchecendree, tannins fins et glaces repartis de facon homogenes, finale ample’

Tank 2 : ‘Nez encore discret et sur la retenue, attaque sur tannins crayeux encore bruts, bonne fraicheur, finale longue’

This is the language of a technician, but for me it means an awful lot, and I look forward with great excitement to sharing with you these future vintages as they mature.

Best wishes,

Jean-Francois Boras