1986 | Château Cheval Blanc | Saint-Emilion

Strong ruby ​​garnet, ocher reflections, delicate orange edges. Needs some air, delicate velvet, ripe cherries, candied orange zest, a hint of cedar wood and chocolate. Elegant and juicy on the palate, silky tannins, fine extract sweetness, mineral notes in the finish, black berries, a hint of pickled black olives in the aftertaste, a versatile food accompaniment.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: Tasted at the château, the 1986 Cheval Blanc has a far superior bouquet to the 1996 Cheval Blanc when I tasted them side by side. The aromatics here are far more cohesive and complex, very delineated with expressive Cabernet Franc, hints of cooked meat, cranberry, juniper berries and wilted rose petals - just gorgeous. The palate is beautifully balanced with slightly furry tannin that is offset by a superb seam of acidity. It is nicely structured but not overbearing, leather and truffle filtering through the black fruit and while there is a little austerity on the finish, it is purely complementary. Though 1986 is not known as a Right Bank vintage, the 1986 Cheval Blanc pulled victory out of the bag and at 30 years, it continues to give immense pleasure.

• John Gilman: The 1986 Cheval Blanc is a beautiful wine and one of the sleeper vintages for this fine estate in the decade of the 1980s. The really refined and lovely nose wafts from the glass in a complex mélange of dark berries, menthol, cigar ash, herbal tones, soil, espresso and a deft touch of new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, suave and classy, with a fine core of fruit, modest, ripe tannins and a very long, still modestly austere and perfectly balanced finish. All this lovely wine needs is just a bit more time in the cellar.

Producer Information

Château Cheval Blanc is a highly lauded wine estate in the Saint-Émilion region of northeast Bordeaux. It is certainly the most famous Cabernet Franc-based wine in the world, albeit often alongside very similar levels of Merlot. Typically, the "grand vin" (the estate's eponymous wine) is lush and full bodied with great weight of fruit. It tends to require ten years of bottle age and the best vintages can last half a century or more. The second wine of the estate is Le Petit Cheval. Vines have been grown since the 14th Century at this spot but the vineyard as it is known today took shape in the 19th Century when the core plots were added to by purchases from the nearby Figeac estate. Subsequent replantings established the atypical half-Merlot, half-Cabernet Franc proportions. Cheval Blanc gained its first medal at the 1862 Universal Exhibition in London – the first of a series of successes building its reputation and achieving price levels comparable to the Médoc first growths, which paved the way for a château to be built on the estate. In the first classification of Saint-Émilion wines in 1955, Cheval Blanc was awarded the highest possible rating and remains a Premier Grand Cru Classé A. In 1998, after 166 years of continuous family ownership, Bernard Arnault, the head of luxury goods firm LVMH, and the late Baron Albert Frère (a Belgian billionaire investor) jointly purchased the estate. The spectacular new cellar opened in 2011, with 52 concrete vats (replacing stainless steel) of differing sizes corresponding to different vineyard plots. The grand vin spends 16 to 18 months in new oak barrels from a variety of cooperages. Production totals 80,000 bottles annually. Classified with the top ranking of Premier Grand Cru Classé A since the inception of the Saint-Emilion classification in the 1950s, it famously withdrew from the ranking in 2022. Nonetheless, it is still regarded by many as one of the greatest – if not, the greatest – wines of the appellation (and in wider Bordeaux).

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