L’Innocence de Séraphine 2017
“Medium to full bodied, it displays fine blackberry & blackcurrant aromas with hints of dense and rich dark chocolate notes and an engaging bitter cherry finish – it has great length and promises to be a very fine wine.”
— Jane Masters MW
Tasting Note
Deep and black, intense but not opaque with an expressive nose of creamed black fruit, cinnamon stock notes, grilled new oak, toasty and caramelised blue fruits too. On the palate, more red fruit than black, cool, creamed and floral with a savoury under-brush note, focused more on the elegance than power with the oak to the fore at present but leading to a juicy toasty finish.
Vineyard
Our vineyard has a surface of 2.2 hectares but is split into two parcels of vines. At Plince we have 1 hectare of vines, situated on a well-draining slope of sandy topsoil over clay and deep gravels and 0.4h of this plot was replanted with Cabernet Franc in April 2017 at 8000 vines per/h.
The second block at Mazeyres is 1.2h and although laid out in just one parcel, there are two distinct sections. The first part (currently in production) consists of a raised deposit of deep gravels on 0.6h and is planted with old Merlot vines. The second part sits on a gently sloping 0.6h and is a patchwork of shallow sandy soils over gravels and blue clay (smectite) and was replanted with Merlot in April 2017 at a density of 8,000 plants per/h.
Vinification
One day of cold soak (10°C) followed by alcoholic fermentation (26–28°C) for 9/10 days with regular ‘remontage’ and ‘pigeage’ and a single ‘delestage’.
Post fermentation extended maceration (30°C) for 3 weeks followed by malolactic fermentation in 300L French oak barrels (50% new, 50% second-fill) and then aged in barrels for 12–14 months.
Grape Variety: 100% Merlot
Alcohol: 13.5% by volume
RS: Less than 2 g/l
Production: 1600 bottles
Harvest
Although the 2017 vintage will be remembered as the year of the Bordeaux frost, in Pomerol the vines were hardly touched, although many other challenges lay ahead.
After a very early bud break, harvest always looked likely to be early, but when the flowering began in mid-May things looked very promising with a good fruit set and no heavy rain until the end of June. However July was then quite mixed, sometimes sunny but often cloudy and mild and as 'veraison' began relatively early, we continued to enjoy a fairly hot and dry August.
However, rain then fell during the first half of September and whilst it was initially welcomed after the long hot spell, it also brought about lower temperatures and some serious concerns over ripening in the build up to harvest.
Thankfully, the sun returned for the second half of the month and the threat of rot or dilution receded completely and we commenced our first harvest on 6th September, storing the fruit in a cool room overnight. Early the next morning the fruit was carefully loaded onto the first sorting table and then de-stemmed using our precision CUBE system with second selection by hand before falling directly into a fermentation tank. All of our fruit processing was done by hand and gravity.
We then waited until 26th September to complete harvest and picked the parcel at Mazeyres and then moved to pick the remaining rows at Plince. Once again, the fruit was stored overnight in the winery and hand-processed the next morning.
Overall, our yields were down by 60% for what is regarded as normal in Pomerol, but the quality of our wines from this first vintage at Chateau Séraphine were well received by the Wine Press and Trade alike.