Top La Conseillante wines: 21 vintages tasted

Jane Anson gets in depth with Château La Conseillante following a 21-vintage vertical tasted at the estate...

I recently learnt from The Bordeaux Atlas and Encyclopaedia of Châteaux (St Martin’s Press, 1997) that Château La Conseillante’s motto used to be faire peu, mais faire bon – ‘do little, but do it well’.

I haven’t heard that motto from them recently, but this is something that all the great estates of Pomerol – the most small-scale and artisan of Bordeaux appellations – seem to have mastered. Or rather, doing an extremely good job of appearing to do very little as they move the grapes from vineyard to cellar, while in fact doing an awful lot.

The tasting

A 21- vintage vertical is hard to beat in terms of revealing just exactly how much work goes into the art of letting the terroir speak.

This vertical, tasted at the château at the end of last year, covers the timespan from 1995 to 2015. I tasted the 2016 last week, and it will be included in my Bordeaux-in-bottle 2016 report, available soon on Decanter Premium.

Scroll down to see the wine reviews

The estate

La Conseillante’s owners have remained the same throughout, and in fact have done since 1871, when the Nicolas family bought the property from the descendants of Catherine Conseillan, a Libourne iron merchant who among other things sold wires for vine training. I’m guessing you can work out that she gave the property its name.

It stands on the same footprint as it did in 1871, with vines spread over 12ha, excepting the purchase in 2014 of an additional 0.315ha located in a parcel called La Gravette just next to Vieux Château Certan.

This is a pretty good size in Pomerol, meaning that the estate clocks it at over double the average, although only one-quarter of the size of the area’s biggest property – Château de Sales, which stands at 40ha.

La Conseillante is located right on the border with St-Émilion, next to L’Evangile and facing Cheval Blanc. Pomerol’s signature can be found in Cheval, rather than St-Emilion’s in La Conseillante – no doubt because they share the same soil characteristics of clay, gravel and sand.

Today, it’s hard to argue that this is anything other than archetypal Pomerol – a seductive, finessed quality to the tannins and an opulent generosity to the fruit in almost every vintage. And even when that’s lacking, there’s still an openness and warmth that so many of us love about this appellation.

But there have been plenty of times when it was considered inconsistent, particularly during the 1970s, and in other moments it has been accused of being too refined to truly reflect the best of Pomerol.

It’s something that Marielle Cazeaux, technical director since 2015, following on from Jean-Michel Laporte, has been keen to emphasise through her winemaking – marrying the character of the place (with its floral aromatics from 20% Cabernet Franc) with the potential of Pomerol.

‘We don’t want to sacrifice the elegance that so many people love at La Coseillante,’ she told me on taking over the role, ‘but a slow build of flesh and texture is key to how I see Pomerol’.

There have been other changes in recent years:

• The arrival of the fifth-generation of the family, in the form of Bertrand, Henri and Jean-Valmy Nicolas.
• New cellars as of 2012, allowing small-scale vinification of the 18 mini-plots in 22 cement tanks.
• A second wine, Duo de Conseillante, launched in 2007, which allows further refinement of the main wine.
• There has also been a clear move towards organic farming. The estate is now undergoing official conversion, although two vineyard treatments were required in 2017 to guard against mildew during flowering.
• Since 2013, Michel Rolland has been acted as a consultant, taking over from Gilles Paquet.

La Conseillante factbox:

Soil composition 60% grey clay & 40% sandy gravel, resting on red iron clay

Grape types 80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc

Planting density 7,000 vines per hectare on average

Average age of vines 35 years

Ageing 50-80% in new French oak barrels

La Conseillante 1995-2015:

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