Top St-Emilion 2017 wines

It’s worth pointing out that the greatest terroirs were not always spared by the notorious frost in St-Emilion , unlike in the Médoc , because it was just so much more widespread and wind direction had a large impact. [subscriber-content] Scroll down to see the wines Yields over here were 21.7hl/ha for St-Emilion (less than half of last year), and 23.9hl/ha for Pomerol , around 40% less than 2016. Over in Fronsac , the altitude helped and although there was a lot of frost, almost no one seemed to lose more than 50%, and a number of estates up on the highest point of the plateau lost nothing at all. Yields at estates like Château Monlot tell their own story about how hard it is to generalise in 2017 – they had an average of 17hl/ha, but that equated to almost zero in frost affected vines and a pretty average 40hl/ha in non-frost affected. It means that having frost does not have to equate to affecting the quality of the first wine, assuming the grapes were very carefully sorted, and many estates made excellent bottles just in small quantities. In frost-affected estates, you’ll find unusual blends such as at Château Jean Faure (95% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec) and at Fleur Cardinale (30% Cabernets compared to around 10% normally). The gravel-clay plateau in Pomerol and much of the limestone plateau across Fronsac, St-Emilion and Castillon survived many of the season’s challenges, although the cool nights meant that the austere, saline side of limestone is very much on display in a lot of them, something that will not make them universally popular. You’ll also find unusually low alcohols across most of the Right Bank. Château Pavie is at 14.6%, Petrus in Pomerol also around the same level, but most wines are a good percentage lower than that. This is because although it was an early budding and early harvest, the summer (although extremely dry) had cool nights, plus there were September rains to contend with, so the fruit character is inevitably a little fresher and juicier than in recent years. [/subscriber-content] Jane's top St-Emilion 2017 wines: Wines below scored 91 points and above. See all St-Emilion 2017 ratings here . [wine-collection] See all St-Emilion 2017 ratings here Back to the main Bordeaux en primeur page

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Top St-Emilion 2017 wines

Jane’s top St-Emilion 2017 wines:

See all St-Emilion 2017 ratings here

Back to the main Bordeaux en primeur page

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