Chateau Malartic-Lagraviere Blanc 2016
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Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
A particularly wet winter and spring promised good yields. One of the best summers of the decade, with a long dry period, brought power and concentration. A remarkable late season, with substantial differences in temperatures, ensured elegance for this exceptional vintage. Each of these stages, with an extreme climatology, has been chained with a perfect tempo: This is the singularity of this vintage.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is intense and concentrated, ripe in generous tropical and citrus fruits. There is plenty of lemon as well as grapefruit in the tight, mineral texture. It is likely to age well, and should be best from 2020.
Barrel Sample: 94–96 Points -
James Suckling
Very bright and floral with plenty of passion fruit, kiwi and melon on the nose. Juicy and elegant with a stunning balance of fruit, delicate oak and elegant acidity that drives the very long, energetic finish. Drink or hold.
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Decanter
This is a wine where the Sauvignon dominates on the nose, but on the palate a host of other flavours come through, giving a more nuanced, complex and interesting wine. The slate grabs you halfway through, and drags things slowly to a close - that's the great thing about minerality, it's a texture and it slows things down, so holds the wine longer in your mouth.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A terrific white that’s up with the top efforts in the vintage, the 2016 Château Malartic-Lagravière Blanc comes from a 7-hectare vineyard in the Graves region and is 85% Sauvignon and 15% Sémillon raised in 55% new barrels. It has terrific freshness and purity as well as medium body, a concentrated, layered, texture, perfumed notes of lemon curd, white grapefruits, and flowers, and a distinct sense of minerality. The whites in the vintage have a good mix of purity and richness, and this is a great example. It’s going to benefit from a year or two and drink well for at least a decade. Tasted twice, count me in as a fan.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Malartic Lagraviere 2016 Blanc is a blend of 85% Sauvignon Blanc and 15% Sémillon. The nose is youthfully muted, revealing subtle scents of lemongrass, crushed rocks, lime cordial and green mango with a waft of orange blossoms. Medium-bodied, the palate features great intensity with a lively backbone and long, textured finish.
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Since acquiring Château Malartic-Lagravière in 1997, the Bonnie family has continued to work tirelessly, with passion and commitment, to perfect the estate’s wines and carry them to the highest level.
The estate used to belong the family of Comte Hippolyte Maurès de Malartic, was known under the name of Domaine de la Gravière until 1850, when it changed name to take on its current name of Château Malartic-Lagravière. The Bonnies and their team are doing everything to enable this premium terroir to express itself in all its magnificence: intra-plot management of the vineyard, High Environmental Value certification and the whole winemaking process is gravity-fed. They develop complex, balanced, elegant wines, so tailored they can be considered ‘haute-couture’.
Château Malartic-Lagravière is one of the only six classified growths both for its red and white. Its wines are well known all over the world amongst the very best wines in the Pessac-Léognan appellation.
Sometimes light and crisp, other times rich and creamy, Bordeaux White Blends typically consist of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. Often, a small amount of Muscadelle or Sauvignon Gris is included for added intrigue. Popularized in Bordeaux, the blend is often mimicked throughout the New World. Somm Secret—Sauternes and Barsac are usually reserved for dessert, but they can be served before, during or after a meal. Try these sweet wines as an aperitif with jamón ibérico, oysters with a spicy mignonette or during dinner alongside hearty Alsatian sausage.
Recognized for its superior reds as well as whites, Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank claims classified growths for both—making it quite unique in comparison to its neighboring Médoc properties.
Pessac’s Chateau Haut-Brion, the only first growth located outside of the Médoc, is said to have been the first to conceptualize fine red wine in Bordeaux back in the late 1600s. The estate, along with its high-esteemed neighbors, La Mission Haut-Brion, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Pique-Caillou and Chateau Pape-Clément are today all but enveloped by the city of Bordeaux. The rest of the vineyards of Pessac-Léognan are in clearings of heavily forested area or abutting dense suburbs.
Arid sand and gravel on top of clay and limestone make the area unique and conducive to growing Sémillon and Sauvignon blanc as well as the grapes in the usual Left Bank red recipe: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and miniscule percentages of Petit Verdot and Malbec.
The best reds will show great force and finesse with inky blue and black fruit, mushroom, forest, tobacco, iodine and a smooth and intriguing texture.
Its best whites show complexity, longevity and no lack of exotic twists on citrus, tropical and stone fruit with pronounced floral and spice characteristics.