The 2019 Domaine de Chevalier is a magical wine in the making, wafting from the glass with aromas of wild plums, crushed blackcurrants and violets mingled with hints of pencil shavings, subtle spices and coniferous forest floor. Medium to full-bodied, deep and seamless, with a vibrant core of fruit, beautifully refined tannins and lively acids, it's exquisitely elegant and harmonious, concluding with a long, perfumed finish. Stylistically, this wine exhibits a much closer affinity with the great Domaine de Chevalier of yesteryear than much of what was produced here in the early 2000s. It's a masterclass in what contemporary Bordeaux can deliver, and worth a special effort to seek out.
This 67-hectare estate in Pessac-Léognan is at the top of its game today, and the 2019 vintage is a striking success. When the Bernard family purchased Domaine de Chevalier in 1983, the vineyards amounted to only 20 hectares: expansion followed in the woodlands (much of which remain) that occupy this site, on the same stony gravel and black sand over iron-rich clay that defines the estate's historic vineyards. It's a cold site in winter, surrounded by trees, but warm in summer, as the stones reflect heat and the black sands absorb it. Farming is now organic and biodynamic, with experiments with cover crops and unhedged canopies, and drainage to improve more humid parcels. Sauvignon Blanc is planted in the estate's coolest sites, Cabernet Sauvignon on its warmest, and everything else is planted in between. Since 1983, Domaine de Chevalier has naturally evolved: as new plantings came online, the wines lost some of the intensity-without-weight that had always been their signature; in the early 2000s, a concerted effort was made to attain fuller maturity and more concentration, and the wines became a little chunkier and more obviously oaky, too; but recent years have seen a return to seamless elegance, without any loss of depth or persistence. In many respects, indeed, the last few vintages of Domaine de Chevalier bear a closer stylistic kinship to the great wines produced at this address in the 1970s and before than they do to the vintages of the early 2000s. Olivier Bernard and his team, in short, are to be congratulated for ushering in a new golden age at an estate that produces one of Bordeaux's most singular and characterful wines.
