Château Fonroque 2014
Run by d’Alain Moueix
Technical Director Laurent Nougaro
Vintage weather conditions
The season began with favourable conditions and early budding. Flowering took place during a dry, sunny June. The summer was more chaotic, cooler and stormier. The vines hit delays, and veraison was spread out over a long period of time. From late August onwards, particularly hot weather set in for a significant period, culminating in an unusually mild end to the season. There was significant temperature variance, helping to ripen the pips and skins. The weather remained dry, ensuring well concentrated grapes.
Harvest area*
17,17 hectares
Harvest terroir*
Limestone plateau and limestone-clay hillside
Grapes harvested*
90% Merlot – 10% Cabernet Franc
Harvest dates
23 September to 7 October
Winemaking
Cultivation methods
Estate certified organic since 2006 and biodynamic since 2008 – member of Biodyvin.
Maturation
30% new barrels and 70% enthat have contained at least one previous wine
Yield
43 hectolitres / ha
Production
47.333 bottles
* For this Vintage.
Tasting notes
A beautiful garnet and purple colour. The nose is complex (Morello cherry, wild strawberry, coffee, old rose), fine and refined. The wine is juicy, lively and fresh on the palate, with a fleshy, caressing feel. This vintage has a strong backbone as well as pleasing limestone tension, beautiful minerality and saline notes.
Notes updated by Alain Moueix – 2017
‘This vintages beautifully expresses all that biodynamics can add to a wine. It has a chiselled, sculpted, gothic structure. It has power, but there is no showy display of it. The wine has nothing to prove. I am a fan of wines that, like certain paintings, possess and offer their own power without any fuss. 2014 is upright, lingering and taut without being in the slightest bit austere. The effects of biodynamics are also felt in the precision and freshness of the utterly exceptional fruit. Fonroque is showing of a particularly refined side of its terroir’s potential.’