Chateau Palmer and Chateau LaGrange

Yesterday we went to two other wineries in left bank Medoc communes.

The first one we visited was Chateau Palmer.

Like most Bordeaux wines in this region, the predominant grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Chateau Palmer is in the Margaux commune of the Medoc, and these wines are considered more "feminine" than those of Saint Estephe (where we went the day before to tour Cos D'Estournel).

Our tour guide attributed this femininity (a certain round lushness in the wines), to the fact that Palmer uses a higher percentage of Merlot in its blend than Cabernet Sauvignon. Merlot is known to impart a round smoothness to wines (although, after telling us this, we observed that the 1996 Palmer we tasted was actually 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot). Perhaps it is not so much the quantity of the Merlot as it is the quality.

I had been told this about France, but I had completely forgotten how proud each winery and wine region is of its individual product, and of the different soils and terroir that make their wine different (and, of course, better!) than the wines of another region.

We saw this everywhere we went: people sharing with us the details of the type of soil they had in their vineyards, and why that type of soil is so great for the vines. Palmer for example, had sand and rock soils.

Another fact I had forgotten, is that France is not alowed to irrigate their vines. This returns to the idea of Terroir, and the notion that whatever nature gives you that year is what you have to deal with, and what gives such a strong character to each different vintage.

This year, for example, they had a cold wet spring. Since vines are pollinated by wind, the damp caused the pollen to stick to itself rather than to blow away in the wind, which has led to poor pollination of the vines. That combined with the cold meant that Palmer's Merlot vines currently have sparser, smaller grapes, which means that the winery is going to have to cut off a lot of clusters to allow the remaining ones to produce better quality fruit.

Finally, it was time to taste: She started us on a 2007 Alter Ego, which is the "second" wine of the Chateau, or rather the wine that they felt was good, but not good enough to be their main wine.

This wine was 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine was created, in many ways, to compete with the New World Wines, because it is lush, fruity and ready to drink now, with black and red fruits and chocolate notes.

The 1996 Palmer she tasted us on next was a completely different animal, in that it had much more earth and mineral in addition to the fruit, with notes of mushroom, damp earth, smoky leaf-pile in addition to the rich cassis and black currant fruit. The Petit Verdot also added spicy notes of licorice and floral. Just 5% really adds depth and complexity to the wine.

From what I can gather, it seems that Cabernet Sauvignon gives the backbone and structure to the wine, as well as age-ability, while the Merlot gives softness and plushness and the Petit Verdot adds depth and spice. Massive generalization, but you begin to hear similar comments made when touring these wineries.

After that tour we moved on to Chateau Lagrange in Saint Julien. Again, different soil types, different terroir, different flavors to the wines entirely.

Chateau Lagrange was purchased in (I believe) 1983 by a Japanese beverage company, and they brought in all the latest technology. It is pretty amazing to see these 18th century Chateaux with all these massive stainless steel tanks, and computerized panels which control the exact temperatures of each tank during fermentation.

Here is a picture of what essentially comprises the first few meters of soil there. You look at these rocks and think that nothing can grow in there, but the vines thrive in it, and the red rocks, apparently, are the most prized for adding an iron minerality to the wines.

What I found interesting here is that the grapes they use for their main wine, Chateau Lagrange, come from the older vines, most of which are about 45 years old (apparently Merlot vines can still produce beautiful fruit at 100 years), while the grapes for their second wine, Les Fiefs de Lagrange come from the younger vines.

This reinforces something I learned earlier that the older vines tend to produce superior fruit.

Both of the Lagrange wines have a significantly higher proportion of Petit Verdot in them, 14% in the 2008 Fiefs de Lagrange and 13% in the 2002 Lagrange. These wines definitely had much more pepper, clove, allspice and floral (violet/rose) than the Chateau Palmer wines.

Overall, the tours we went on so far have been really enlightening, and I'm looking forward to Monday when we will explore two Chateaux from Saint Emilion, on the Right Bank.