Description
Château Canon Chaigneau, Lalande-de-Pomerol “Cuve 8a”
The search is over. This is the finest, most delectable $30 Bordeaux you, me, and anyone else you pour it for will drink this year. I’ll go even further: If the experience this bottle provides comes up “short” for anyone, I’ll accept and endure any and all hate mail that comes my way. Wondering why this is the hill I’m willing to die on? Because today’s special debut offer, and Lalande-de-Pomerol in general, is graduate-level inside baseball that massively over-delivers.
On the one hand, this hidden-value appellation borders Pomerol, home to the world’s cultiest and most expensive Merlot real estate. On the other, it’s crafted by one of Bordeaux’s most illustrious, perfect-score-amassing winemakers in modern history: Thierry Garnaud. From 1988-2018, as Cellar Master at Château Cheval Blanc, he bottled liquid gold time and again, gold that now fetches over $1,000. And then in 2018, the world’s quietest seismic shift occurred: Thierry “retired” and focused his efforts entirely on the 16th-century property of Château Canon Chaigneau, just 1.5 miles away. It was also at this time he decided to craft a brand-new wine, today’s lustrous and absolutely spellbinding “Cuve 8a.” If you love polished Right Bank and the famous terroir of Pomerol, this entirely concrete-aged Bordeaux will weaken knees and fill up hearts for years to come. This is epic $30 stuff. Buy a case.
Lalande-de-Pomerol is no “flyover” appellation. Romans cultivated the vine here 2,000 years ago, its stone-built chateaux date back centuries, and the terroir shares many similarities with its immediate neighbors Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. And I do mean immediate: Château Canon Chaigneu, founded in 1564, is just minutes away from the most iconic Right Bank properties of Petrus, Figeac, L’Évangile, Le Pin, La Conseillante, and Cheval Blanc. That last property is especially noteworthy because their maitre de chai, aka Cellar Master, of nearly 40 years left in 2018 to devote all of his winemaking hours to Canon Chaigneau.
This was no late-life crisis or spur-of-the-moment decision. Thierry Garnaud had been actively involved at the property since 1995, and a recent change in ownership bestowed him with the opportunity for more creative freedom, something you simply cannot afford to do at a heavily marketed Grand Cru Classé that charges $800+ per bottle. Today’s “Cuve 8a” is the first masterpiece of what will surely be many as Thierry and his team further develop their dynamic range of wines.
Canon Chaigneau’s 30-year-old vines are essentially an extension of Pomerol: The soils here are more sandy than gravelly but the clay and limestone are streaked with those same prized iron deposits—crasse de fer. Their small team farms lutte raisonnée and harvests their crop by hand with a couple of sorts before shuttling the grapes into concrete vessels. After fermentation, the resulting wine continues aging in concrete (“beton”) until blending and bottling. This stunning 2019 debut is 95% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec, known as Pressac on the Right Bank.
