Nose

The nose presents woody, acacia honey, roast apricot and candied notes. On aerating, notes of plum, saffron, almond and green Chartreuse emerge.

Palate

The richness of the vintage gives the palate opulence, with flavours of plum, wood and candied fruit. The smooth finish ends with notes of cocoa bean, ginger and vanilla, which energise this opulence. This is a powerful wine - yet without heaviness - which still needs a little more time to fully open up.

This vintage has great potential, and with the 2009 it will form a duo as promising as 1989-1990.

Growing Conditions

The cool spring temperatures got the vines off to a late start, and this delay remained through to flowering. There were lots of bunches on the vines, requiring some adjustments later on by green harvesting on certain plots. July marked the beginning of a dry, very hot spell, speeding up swelling of the grapes and catching up the delay in the vegetation cycle. Colour change took place in sunny, very hot weather and ripening progressed rapidly.

Harvest

Harvesting started on 22 September and came to a close on 9 November. We conducted 5 successive tries in the vineyard, sometimes interspersed with rainy spells which forced us to wait for the grapes to gain in concentration again, but did not have any impact on quality.

Bottling

Bottling date: August 3rd 2012

Aging

50% in new barrels,
50% from barrels of one vintage, for 20 months.

Appearance

A deep golden yellow in colour, Château Suduiraut 2010 shows a first sign of maturity with some amber glints.