40 years of excellence: A retrospective of Domaine de Chevalier

Peter Moser, 20.11.2023

In 1983, the Bernard family acquired the traditional vineyard in Pessac-Léognan in Bordeaux and since then Olivier Bertrand has been responsible for the wines. So far, he has been responsible for forty vintages from this estate, which produces both white and red wines. A good time, he thought, to taste the forty vintages of red wines from the magnum in a group of forty international wine lovers. Falstaff presents the follow-up report on this unique wine tasting, which took place at the winery itself.

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"I'm not impressed by the sheer power of a wine, it's the elegance and finesse that I look for in a great wine and that trigger emotions in me.", says host Olivier Bernard. And these are attributes that wine lovers appreciate about the Domaine de Chevalier wines. And these were explored in four rounds during the tasting, during which the wines were by no means presented according to vintage. The tasting in four acts was sensibly structured according to the structure of the wines, within a group always from the oldest to the youngest. The host explained right at the beginning that the classification was not so easy, because "time has changed some categories, the 1989, for example, was once iconic, but from today's perspective it is probably no longer."

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