2016 Château Cambon la Pelouse

Bordeaux is the world’s most famous fine-wine producing region. Even non-wine drinkers recognize the names of Bordeaux’s celebrated wines, such as Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild. Located near the Atlantic coast in southwest France, the region takes its name from the seaport city of Bordeaux, a wine trading center with an outstanding site on the Garonne River and easy access to the Atlantic. Like most French wine regions, Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, then tended by medieval monks. Aristocrats and nobility later owned the region’s best estates and today estates are owned by everyone from non-French business conglomerates to families who have been proprietors for generations. Bordeaux has nearly 280,000 acres of vineyards, 57 appellations and 10,000 wine-producing châteaux. Bordeaux is bifurcated by the Gironde Estuary into so-called “right bank” and “left bank” appellations. Bordeaux’s red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. It also makes white wines of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. There are several classification systems in Bordeaux. All are attempts to rank the estates based on the historic quality of the wines.

Producer Vintage Notes: 2016 had a different climate…but still owned all the requirements to a creation of a great vintage. A weather which played leapfrog: a chill and humid winter and early spring … The summer was hot and very dry, the last rain was in mid-June (-80% of rains, similiar to 1959!). The flowering started the first week of June with no rain at all. South-Médoc terroir mainly composed by gravels allowed to the vine its warming and its vegetal cycle’s development. The berry set ran through good conditions, we noticed a few shatters which were not really worrying...the 22th of September: beginning of the harvest, the 20th of October: final picking.

54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 42% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot