They’ve ripped it up, restructured the soils, and rolled it into Belair Monange.
1964 Clos Madeleine was the first Saint-Emilion I ever tasted.
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Still sitting on my OWC of the 2005 Magdelaine, I’m too skiddish to even open my Magdelaines from the 90’s (having a sizable stash from 1990 and older helps)! Even with 12 bottles, I’ll probably wait at least until 2025 to try one of my 05s, but your 95-pt comment sure does make me look forward to that day!
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Thnx for the note Robert, must admit I am surprised this is open for drinking given the tannic nature of many 2005s. Good luck with the hurricane aftermath.
Have had both the 2004 and the 2006 in the last year and found both to be very open and very enjoyable but also not showing a lot of tertiary notes.
cheers Brodie
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Progress.
As stated before, Belair Monange has been an abomination so far. Even as compared to older Bel Air, of which I’ve had both ‘89 and ‘90 recently. The former side by side with the ‘89 Magdelaine.
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Sorry to hear of your plight, Robert, but glad you are having a memorable bottle. I opened one a year ago, and it needed serious time in the decanter before it showed much, and those were still pretty primary.
We will be doing our vertical in a couple of weeks, and it will be interesting to see how it fits in with the rest.
Any thoughts or notes to share on these? Pretty please?
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Pray do tell, what does “restructured the soils” mean in this context?
‘89 Magdelaine has been pretty consistent and may be in a strange phase as it is delicious but has a steak saucy retronasal quality (I’ve gotten that from the last 3 bottles over a few years) that I don’t find in other vintages and that hides for me the typical mulberry type fruit that normally has what I like to romanticize is a limestone-driven edge.
89 and 90 Bel Air are both old school solid wines showing cooler than you might imagine for their vintages. Blind, it would be easy to think these are from the Left Bank, especially without sufficient air, and they do have a bit more cab than is typical of St Emilion, but over time the Right Bankness from the Merlot emerges. Good wines. Not at Magdelaine level. Let alone the ‘89 VCC and L’Evangile that were in the next flight when tasting the ‘89s.
@Jay_Miller may have his own thoughts as we had the ‘89s together with our blind Zoom group just a few weeks ago.
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Digging up and then putting back the topsoil, and creating terraces.
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Is this done primarily for the terracing, or no?
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There is a school of thought that you if you break up hard pans and homogenize the soils (you can also add amendments and drainage) in terms of depth and composition, you improve the vineyard. There is quite a bit of this going on in Burgundy too: heavy machinery removes the top soil, fractures the limestone, and replaces the top soil. We will see how it plays out in the long term…
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I assume this is for estates with lesser terroirs, as those who have better ones would not want put them at risk.
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Yes, seems so risky. How could this not fundamentally change the signature of terroir? Why dig up trouble?
I suppose if a soil has changed so much over 200+ years of viticulture (leaching, erosion, compaction, changes aggregate size and chemistry, translocations) that it can no longer really support healthy grapes, that could be grounds for a radical intervention.
Not so. To give two examples, a prime parcel of Morey 1er Cru and a number of top spots on the Pomerol plateau have had this treatment in recent years. I could show you some photos if you like…
I’m interested!
Me too.