Chateau Prieure-Lichine 4eme Grand Cru Classe, Margaux 2010

65% Cabernet Sauvignon
30% Merlot
5% Petit Verdot

50 % new barrels and 50 % second use barrels.

The 2010 growing season provided us with the perfect conditions to express the special character of the Margaux terroir in a harmonious blend of dense, complex Cabernet Sauvignon and rich Merlot that reached rare levels of opulence.
From the beginning to the end of the season, the soils in the 2010 vintage had a slight decit in water supply and quite moderate variations in temperature.
The cold, rainy spell we had in June during the owering of the Merlot vines helpfully provided us with a light, natural thinning of the crop.
The moderate water decit stress in the vines combined with alternating cool nights and hot, sunny summer days enhanced the ripening process of the grapes without any danger of fungal diseases.
This made it possible for us to wait for each plot to reach its optimum moment of ripeness before we harvested.
The Merlot was the rst to take the oor on September 30th, while the Cabernet Sauvignon had the last dance on October 20th.
This superb raw material, with outstanding anthocyanin potential, produced a fabulously dense vintage that has lovely freshness and great fruit precision. The Merlots found excellent acidities with Cabernets Sauvignon that proved the perfect foil to balance the high levels of alcohol reached again this year.
In this vintage, we trialled the pigeage extraction technique (punching down the cap of skins) on a vat of Merlot and another of Cabernet Sauvignon, so as to extract in the gentlest way possible all the richness contained in our grapes.
Already, the results from these vats, selected from the nest plots on the plateau of Cantenac, have fullled all our expectations and conrmed not only the outstanding quality of the Prieuré-Lichine terroir but also the eectiveness of these technical evolutions.

This has a lovely Margaux aroma of rose, bright red fruit and cassis. It is richly fruited on the palate like chocolate, leather, cedar.

Robert Paker 89