Château Cheval Blanc 2015

A lovely sanguine hint leads off, followed by racy, elegant juniper, tobacco, red currant and damson plum notes that move in unison. Broadens and deepens, adding notes of currant preserves, warm ganache and smoldering tobacco, with a swath of loamy structure. Yet even as the bass line increases in volume through the finish, this maintains purity and poise. Should deliver some stunning aromatics at peak, which will take awhile to achieve. Best from 2025 through 2045. 8,250 cases made.

Lovely perfumed fruit on the palate, this has well-integrated tannins that have a soft, gentle, mouth-coating texture, with excellent juicy appeal straight away. Really quite herbal here, lots of mint and eucalyptus with tons of liquorice and some mint chocolate. Like the 2016, everything is so well balanced, just giving you hints of different elements. Here it is the cool blue fruit, liquorice and mint. So well executed, defined, precise and svelte. It is mouthfilling too though; you know this is a big wine with plenty of power and structure but so supple and agile. Excellent precision. Still super young and a bit shy, it's not giving away all its secrets right now, but you'd never guess this was from a warm, ripe vintage such is the freshness. Such class on show.

Not a particularly deep color for this very ripe vintage, but this has a really beautiful nose, with a wide spectrum of red and black fruit, plus some floral notes. Rich, yet poised, with excellent balance of ripe fruit and full, fine tannin. Very long finish that’s bright and lively, considering the imposing scale of this wine. Drink or hold. Château Quintus vertical tasting. SP.

The 2015 Cheval Blanc is sublime on the nose with red fruit, sandalwood, touches of tobacco and dried flowers. The oak is seamlessly integrated and very well focused. The palate is fine-boned, fresh and tensile, with a keen line of acidity, real depth and insistent grip suggesting that this will age with panache. Serious and absorbing from start to finish, this is one of the wines of the vintage. Tasted blind at the 2015 Bordeaux Ten-Year-On tasting at Farr Vintners.

It can be a dangerous combination for all the right reasons when you blend decadent sensuality with velvety tannins and layers of silky fruits. You cannot help but devour the wine far too quickly. Concentrated, full and rich, the fruit glides across your palate effortlessly. There is lift, volume, length and complexity. This is a wine for the future which will easily earn a legendary status as it ages, evolves and matures. If you cannot afford it, make sure you find friends who can, as this is a wine you need to taste.

Dark ruby with purple reflections and subtle brightening on the rim. Aromas of fine dark berry fruit, a hint of chocolate and nuances of exotic spices, multi-faceted and mineral. The palate is powerful and finely structured with substantial yet silky tannins with ripe cherry notes. Extremely complex and possessing great energy and length, the wine lingers for minutes on the finish and has great ageing potential. The second wine Petit Cheval was not produced this year.

I continue to absolutely love the 2015 Chateau Cheval Blanc. It’s one of those powerful, sexy, yet also weightless and elegant wines that’s going to drink well all its life. Checking in as a blend of 55% Merlot and 45% Cabernet Franc brought up in new barrels, it offers a kaleidoscope of aromas and flavors led by beautiful sweet fruits as well as incredible floral, spice, and graphite nuances. It’s full-bodied, with a rich, rounded, opulent texture, sweet tannins, and a blockbuster finish. As with a lot of 2015s, it has the sweetness of fruit and ripe tannin that allows it to drink well today, but it’s going to be very long-lived and have 3-4 decades of prime drinking.

55% Merlot, 45% Cabernet Franc. Deep purple, dense at the core, with garnet glints on the rim. The bouquet is still very restrained, showing plenty of dark berries, fine woods, jasmine tea, medium-dark malt and, above all, many ripe plums. On the palate it starts with great suppleness, creamy tannins, not particularly heavy, focusing fully on elegance. The finish brings herbs, licorice and again wonderfully sweet malty notes. A majestic Cheval-Blanc, absolutely clear in its direction, capable of aging for a very long time without great fuss. P.S. There is no second wine this year (Le Petit Cheval). There were practically no poor batches; everything was at a top level.

NO SECOND WINE – BUT A DECLASSIFICATION AFTER ALL As at almost all Bordeaux estates, the parcels are harvested separately, day by day, and vinified on their own. This results in a large, complex puzzle that the team systematically assembles after fermentation. Usually, this produces the best of the best, namely Cheval Blanc. What isn’t suitable for the Grand Vin is set aside and bottled a little earlier, with less new oak, as Petit Cheval. Olivier Clouet (at Cheval since 2004 and now Technical Director): “We tasted the different lots practically every day. There were virtually no differences; everything was at an extremely high level. So we decided to select almost everything for Cheval Blanc. By ‘almost everything’, I mean that we had only two lots from smaller parcels that did not meet the extremely high requirements. But this mini-batch wasn’t worth maturing separately and later bottling as Petit Cheval.” 55% Merlot, 45% Cabernet Franc. Deep purple, dense at the core, with garnet highlights at the rim. The bouquet is still very reserved, showing plenty of dark berries, fine woods, jasmine tea, medium-dark malt and, above all, many ripe plums. On the palate it starts with great suppleness, creamy tannins, not particularly heavy and focused entirely on elegance; the finish shows herbs, licorice and again wonderfully sweet malt notes. A majestic Cheval Blanc, perfectly composed, that can age for a very long time without much fuss. P.S. There is no second wine this year (Le Petit Cheval). There were practically no weak lots; everything was at a top level.

(55% Merlot, 45% Cabernet Franc) Silky, dense, elegant, full bouquet, strawberries, blueberries, Damassine plums, tobacco, pralines. Balanced, powerful, tightly knit palate with a velvety, dense structure, plenty of delicate fruit, fine tannins, dense, multifaceted aromatics, long, dense, full finish with plenty of lingering flavors. 19/20 2024 - 2040

This has depths that steal up on you, clinging on through the palate, dark fruit expression, cassis bud, blackcurrant purée, raspberry leaf and mandarin peel freshness, nuanced and gorgeous and hard to argue with. All the plots but two made it into the main wine in this vintage. 100% new oak, Pierre Lurton director. As an aside, it's wonderful tasting Cheval and Ausone in 2015, as both deliver such a clear imprint of their different locations in St Emilion, and both are exceptional wines.

All the plots but two made it into Cheval Blanc 2015. Those two were sold in bulk and no Petit Cheval was made in that year. With 55% Merlot and 45% Cabernet Franc, the deep garnet colored 2015 Cheval Blanc prances out with a gorgeous perfume of roses, spearmint, and black tea, before giving way to a core of chocolate-covered cherries, redcurrant preserves, and juicy plums, plus a waft of iron ore. Full-bodied, the palate is dense and muscular, featuring a fine frame of grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing with loads of floral and mineral fireworks. Stunning!

A very stylish tannin touch with the satin typical of the great vintages of the cru, and a creamy coating that beautifully envelops the whole. There is a depth of great nobility.

The initial floral character of the bouquet, punctuated by a hint of fresh mint, and the rich creaminess stem from the distinctive tension of the estate’s old Cabernet Francs. And the wine goes on and on, returning again and again like a peacock’s tail, marking the length that is so typical of Cheval Blanc.

No second wine at Cheval Blanc in 2015? During blending, the château always keeps a reference wine that is the blend of everything. All the selections made were consistently less good than this overall blend. Hence the decision to forgo a second wine. This avoids a repeat of 2001 when, to win the favor of a major American taster, Merlot was favored in the blend of the grand vin. The second wine, which inherited the Cabernet Francs, now outshines the grand vin, the two wines having been so close. Cheval Blanc 2015 is a beautiful, fresh, dense, elegant wine with very fine tannins and impressive length. The aromas are splendid and highly complex. All 45 plots of the estate were harvested at the optimal time, resulting in very homogeneous quality. Even without a second wine, two plots still had to be excluded, representing 7% of the total.

What elegance, diversity, and intensity in this bouquet! It is marked by freshness with notes of blueberries as well as red berries, along with nuances of licorice. A floral touch. On the palate, the wine is dense, creamy, yet also distinguished. The structure provides solid support and achieves harmony with a breathtaking tannic power! What aromatic intensity, from the very attack through to the finish, persistent and yet so refined. When power and finesse complement each other with such harmony, the notion of a truly great wine becomes self-evident!

The nose is elegant, fruity, velvety, charming, complex, refined and racy. It reveals notes of ripe fruit with a delicate touch of plum jam and hints of spice. The palate is fruity, indulgent, mineral, racy, offering freshness, tension and a lovely silky texture. On the palate, this wine expresses notes of blackberry, plum and, more subtly, fresh blackcurrant, combined with fine touches of strawberry (in the background), a discreet hint of licorice, a touch of jam, tobacco, light oak and delicate spices. Good length. The finish is suave and aromatic. A lovely fruit-forward wine in the house style.

Logo on the cork: CB Dark, intense, beautiful, and youthful color. Very aromatic nose, complex and rare. Shades of ripe fruit combined with the delicacy of violet. Refined from the first sip, juicy mid-palate, particularly aromatic and complex, with great brilliance of flavor; the wine stretches out long and juicy, with a meticulous tannic texture and a very noble flavor. It’s impossible to spit out.