Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Fieuzal offers up aromas of hazel nuts, lemon zest, white peaches, currants, and honeysuckle. Gorgeous acidity, a touch of creamy oak, and a full-bodied mouthfeel result in a Burgundian-style white Graves. Enjoy it over the next 20 years.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is soft, open, but hiding very ripe, generous fruits. With flavors of tropical fruits, and of green plums, this builds on its fruit rather than on the underlying wood notes.
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Wine & Spirits
Decant this white if you open it as a young wine: it's substantial, but gives little without long exposure to air. Pear and apple blossom scents develop, as does a fascinating exotic fruit character. The toastiness of the wine becomes a broad, velvet texture, an elegant train for the fruit, robust enough to match veal schnitzel.
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Wine Spectator
Green apple and honey aromas follow through to a medium body, with bright acidity and a creamy, appley finish. A tasty white.
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.