Top St-Estèphe 2018 wines: ‘A year for hedonists’

There are extremely good St-Estèphe wines in 2018, but the appellation is generally more in-line with what I expected before tasting; texture, power and tannins, but also alcohol.

I might go slightly against the grain here, but I found more concentration in St-Estèphe than usual, and overall the AOC was more up and down than it has been for me over the past four years.It is without doubt a year for hedonists up here, and that is not always the case.Rustic tannins are the exception rather than the rule for sure, and exuberant flavours are everywhere you look.

Yields

The yields tell you just how concentrated these wines are.

Although average yield for the appellation was 44.6 hectares per hectolitre, you can find 25hl/ha at Montrose, 34hl/ha at Le Crock and 30hl/ha at Cos d’Estournel. For comparison, Cos was at 45hl/ha in the highly rated 2016 vintage.

Alcohols

Alcohols are again unusually high for the Left Bank. Montrose 2018 is at 14.8%abv, with Calon at 14.9%, Cos at 14.59% and Ormes de Pez at 14.6%.

Cabernets often reached higher alcohol than Merlots, as also happened in Pauillac and St-Julien.

This produced some unusual outcomes, such as Calon first and second wines having the same alcohol levels, because all the grapes had reached roughly the same potential sugars.

I’ve been trying to work out why, and have come up with a few theories.

Maybe the numerous outcrops that are spread across the appellation made a difference, increasing the exposure to the wind in October.

Maybe the clay soils meant they had to wait for the ripeness for the skins, but then lost the volume because of the delay.

Certainly I heard many times that there was less juice than expected when it came in to the vats.

Montrose was one of many who said they ended up picking more swiftly than expected, because they saw how far the grapes were concentrating through evaporation. Grapes were losing around 1.5% in volume per day in October, largely because of winds.

Hot weather throughout much of the summer and lasting into autumn also set the scene.

‘In theory it it easier to manage drought in St-Estèphe because of the clay in the subsoil’, said Nicolas Glumineau at Château de Pez.

‘But if you didn’t focus enough on taming the tannins and controlling that concentration, you could make monsters’.

I found this year’s de Pez highly appealing, with rich plum fruits and firm but flexible tannins. Likewise, Montrose – cited above – seems to have consumed its alcohol rather effortlessly, although careful sorting was required after harvest.

And I don’t want to be overly critical overall. There are wonderfully impressive barrel samples in St-Estèphe.

The tannin count in St-Estèphe is often pretty similar to 2016, yet the character of the tannins is very different, and almost invariably more seductive and succulent.

But I have some hesitation over their classicism and typicity, and my suggestion for buyers may be that the 2016 is simply more reflective of the very best of this appellation.

St-Estèphe wines potentially offering the best value: Ormes de Pez, de Pez and Meyney.

Top Scoring wines: Cos d’Estournel and Montrose.

See our best rated St-Estèphe 2018 wines

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