Winemaker Notes
Blend: 48% Sauvignon Blanc, 39% Semillon, 7% Sauvignon Gris, 6% Muscadelle
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2017 Chateau Pape Clement Blanc showed spectacularly well and is one of the wines (if not the wine) of the vintage. Based on 55% Sauvignon and 45% Semillon aged 14 months in barrel, it offers powerful notes of honeyed melon, tart pineapple, green figs, and floral notes as well as a terrific sense of minerality. Concentrated, medium to full-bodied, with rocking levels of acidity, give it 2-4 years and enjoy over the following 15 years or more.
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James Suckling
Aromas of pineapple, peaches and apple pie with stone. Deep and intense, yet always subtle in the nose. Full-bodied, layered and very flavorful. However, it stays focused and precise in the mouth and at the finish. Serious length. Still needs three or four years to come together. Better after 2022.
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Wine Spectator
This features a beeswax frame around a large-scaled core of wet straw, creamed white peach, yellow apple and fennel flavors, while a racy quinine thread runs underneath. Shows a flash of brioche on the finish, with the beeswax element lingering. Needs a little time, but this is distinctive and beautiful. Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle. Best from 2021 through 2029.
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Decanter
This has a tautness and an intensity to it, with extremely well placed citrus and white peach flesh, a lick of fresh slate and some wet stones. Good quality.
Barrel Sample -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Pape Clement 2017 Blanc (composed of 55% Sauvignon Blanc and 45% Sémillon) has loads of exotic fruit—pineapple, green guava and passion fruit—with crushed stones, fragrant herbs and mandarin peel hints. The palate is medium-bodied, intense and racy with a long, pure, exotic fruit finish. Rating: 94+
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Wine Enthusiast
Taut, steely and textured, this is a cool, crisp wine. With acidity and minerality all in play, the wine’s long-term future is balanced by its immediate fruitiness. Drink this well-structured wine from 2021.
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.