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Cheval Blanc to launch white wine
St Emilion grand cru Cheval Blanc is to release a white wine later this month, the first to be produced by a major Right Bank estate.
Around 4,500 bottles from the 2014 vintage will be released this month for £100 per bottle. Production is expected to rise to 20,000 bottles over the next few years.
As reported by Decanter, the wine (which is 100% Sauvignon Blanc) is the result of an eight-year experiment by the estate. The team planted three clones of Sauvignon Blanc in 2008 on land acquired from La Tour du Pin Figeac after that château lost its ranking in 2006.
Some 6.5 hectares have been given over to white grapes, 80% Sauvignon Blanc and 20% Semillon, with some vines being planted and others grafted onto 40 year-old rootstocks.
The wine will be known as ‘Le Petit Cheval Blanc’ – as opposed to ‘Petit Cheval’ which is the red second wine of the estate.
How the wine will fare is of course an interesting question. High release prices (for its reds) during en primeur over the past few years has increasingly made Cheval Blanc a difficult proposition for merchants.
Even if the wine is lauded critically (as it often is), its wallet-scorching prices mean it tends to underperform on the secondary market. Out of the vintages 2005-2014 it showed a negative return in nine instances, with an average loss for investors of 17%.
White Bordeaux wines, dry or sweet, have historically struggled in more recent decades. Although there are many fans of certain top Sauternes and the top dry whites of the Left Bank from La Mission Haut-Brion, Domaine des Chevaliers or Mouton, apart from a name Cheval Blanc’s new white is in very limited company on the Right Bank. Only a handful of estates in Saint Emilion make any wine under the AOC Bordeaux Blanc, the most high profile being Jonathan Maltus’ ‘Le Nardain’ – and that is only produced in tiny amounts, perhaps 250 cases a year.
In fact Saint Emilion did once make a lot of white wine. Henri d’Andeli’s 13th century poem, ‘La Batailles des Vins’ lists the best white wines of France that have been gathered for the delectation of King Philip Augustus and Saint Emilion is among them.
That said, for buyers today the prospect of a really top tier white Saint Emilion is extremely novel. That alone or with the name of Cheval Blanc attached may be enough to tempt them to try it or, conversely of course, the prospect of paying £100 a bottle for a wine with no track record will put them off entirely.