Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Some spicy wood on offer with attractive, ripe tropical fruits delivered in a smoothly textured palate that has impressive length and focus. Good concentration. One of the best whites from here in a while. 55% sauvignon and 45% semillon. Drink or hold.
-
Wine Enthusiast
There is a great balance between the spicy wood and the rich fruits that show off the ripe vintage. This is a wine that is poised, concentrated and ready to age.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 de Fieuzal Blanc has plenty of tropical fruit on the nose - pineapple, pink grapefruit and lime aromas that are designed to seduce. The palate has a little fatness on the entry, a little lower in acidity than its peers, with rounded peach and pineapple notes flourishing on the finish. A classy crowd-pleaser, in other words. Barrel Sample: 90-92
-
Wine Spectator
Rich, broad and creamy in feel, with hazelnut, ginger, creamed apple and pear fruit and a long, piecrust-infused finish. Flirts with an exotic feel, but there's a salted butter and chamomile echo through the finish that keeps this harnessed well enough. This has really fanned out since the barrel tasting. Drink now through 2020. 1,200 cases made.
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.