We went to a tasting of
Château Sociando-Mallet presented by Pascale Roby and Richard Bampfield MW at BANK Restaurant in Birmingham, UK. Pascale works for Château Sociando-Mallet and had flown over to the UK to present these wines for the Midlands Wine and Spirit Association, Richard Bampfield MW co-presented ( Laura Clay introduced the evening ). We tasted Château Sociando-Mallet 2008 / 9 / 10 and 1996, and before this we had tasted La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet 2006 / 9 / 10.
At the base of the page is a potted history of the Château Sociando-Mallet Estate.
La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet is the second label of the Sociando-Mallet Estate and we were lucky to be able to compare 2006 / 2009 and 2010, and it was in this order that we tasted them. The make up of grapes in the wine is 50% Merlot and 50% Cabernet Sauvignon sees 65-75%, 11-12 months in new oak.
Down to the wines......
2006 - This had a deep ruby core and slow legs when you swirl the wine in the glass. Popping my nose in the glass - sharp red fruits that include cranberry and sour cherry, along with a herbal edge and a smoky cedar - this wine has had contact with new oak - and it seems to be holding its own, aromas are balanced. It has some aged, tertiary or animal aroma - which makes you want to taste it - great!!
On the mouth, keen acidity, well integrated but bolstering alcohol which means the body is quite full, tannins are quite green and gripping with a chalky sort of texture. The flavours that are immediately obvious are sharp red fruits, stalky green herbal flavours and a pithy finish which is long and mixed with red fruit all the way.
This is a well joined up wine, where everything is in the right place and makes sense, it was a cool vintage hence the stalky flavours and the sharp red fruits - a great food with alot of foods, vegetarian dishes, meat dishes.... etc It is a wine that needs food to balance and work on those tannins!
Score : 86
2009 - Ruby core again, but surprisingly a smaller rim, slow legs which are coloured appear when the glass is swirled. On the nose are darker berry fruits, blackberry, cherry and plum as well as the red fruits seen in the 2006, the green vegetal aromas are less obvious but there is more distinct spice and cedarbox aromas balancing the sweeter riper fruits. On tasting it there is a silkier texture, smoother and mouth-coating, the red berry fruits are overpowered by the sweeter riper black fruits on the palate, there once more is good acidity and the alcohol is bang on, the tannins again are chalky but less intense and drying.The length was long with a green pithy finish intermingled with sour red fruits and a little liquorice twist right at the end. This is a plumper, riper wine than the 2006 and is great to drink now, it could remain in bottle and improve for the next 5 - 8 years, but could I resist ...... I think not!
Score : 88
2010 - again a good medium deep ( you can see your fingers on the glass stem through the core of the wine ) ruby core with narrow rim. The aromas on this wine are more fresh fruit - baked and black, but spice also plays its part. On tasting it - silky mouth-coating and textural with flavours of black ( more than red) fruits, spice, cedar with a little stalky ( green) edge, the acidity is fresh and zippy keeping this wine light and elegant, and the alcohol seemed lower than previous wines but at a good body enrobing level, or maybe better integrated already? This wine really improved with food, it seemed extremely well knitted together, balanced, elegant and one to keep for 5-10 years at least.
Score : 90
Château Sociando-Mallet is the primary / main wine produced at the Chateau, it has a grape make-up of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc, with the grapes coming from the better vineyards. The yields are relatively high - at about 80hl/ha but this is due in the main from the density of planting ( up to 9000 vines/ha), the yield per vine is low, 1 bottle per vine on average.
We tasted 5 vintages, 2007 / 8 / 9 / 10 and 1996, and agin in this order, and so to the wines :-
2007 - A medium to deep ruby core with black tints especially in the core. When sniffed the predominance of black( blackberry, cherry and plum) over-ride the red with additional aromas of coffee, chocolate and nuts is a complex array and leads you on into taste! Silky black fruits which were rich and ripe, sour red fruit, nuts and liquorice all elegant and well intertwined with the coffee and chocolate found on the nose, the acidity was fresh and elegant, the alcohol was in balance and kept the body of the wine silky and weighty. The tannins were chalky but fine grained and had a savoury edge.
Overall this wine was plump and soft - great to drink now, it had been a difficult vintage where the work done in the vineyard and at the sorting table made the difference!
Score : 86
2008 - the medium deep ruby core with black tints at its deepest had a narrow ruby rim, and on swirling the legs were slow and pale ruby coloured. Aromas on this wine was red and perfumed, elegant and finely balanced, a touch linear maybe?
On the palate the black fruit was more obvious and the oak flavours were not so well integrated, this is a wine that is not yet knitted together entirely, the acidity was great and counteracting the slightly higher alcohol, still well balanced and warm. The tannins were dry and chalky, with some way to go in their development/integration.
This wine was well structured, elegant and fine grained in its makeup, it is further back in its development than the previous wine, but has much to give, a great futute, it needs to be kept for at least 5-10 years.
Score : 88
2009 - Again a medium deep ruby core with those black Cabernet Sauvignon tints, and a narrow rim. Aromas of black more than red berry fruits exude from the glass with smokey cedar and herbal notes which intertwine with hazelnuts. Once again the fruit character that the aromas promised, followed by a whip of leather and cedar which were concentrated and ripe. Acidity keeps the mix fresh while the alcohol is slightly warming ( not out of the balance scale - but noticeable ), the tannins were silky and ripe. Overall - a beautiful, silky rich Bordeaux wine with some improvement still to come - ripe and juicy with lots to offer. Great to drink now with food - Enjoy!
Score : 89
2010 - the core on this wine is deep ruby with a rim that was narrow, those black tints once more obvious. On the nose perfumed, elegant black fruits intermingled with cedar and smokey cigar box. Black fruits - elegant and fresh dominate the palate, ripe, juicy and pure. The acidity keeps the wine clean and bright and where it should be, enrobing but not overpowering. The tannins were ripe, fine grained and savoury and the finish was long with fresh fruit driving it and a cedar box end! A wine to keep - with lots of potential, nice now but I feel has a long way to go and will offer much at its peak - 10 years+. Has the potential to be a star!
Score : 91
1996 - This is a wine to enjoy - right from the start - peering into the glass, ruby with garnet at the rim, not as deep as the others, but still with lots of colour. On the nose a complex mix of black fruits, dried fruits ( prunes, dates, sultanas) and nuts are all vying for their place, it is rich and still has a fresh edge, we could not wait to taste.
Rich flavours hit the palate, and wow is it mouth-coating.....not in a heavy weight way, more that it sneaks up and then it is there wanting to be noticed. Great acidity, the alcohol integrated and offers gentle support for this complex and delicious wine with its silky, ripe and tasty tannins Dates, nuts, black cherry are all intertwined, cedar and chocolate/coffee play with each other and the long, long finish is left to both fruit and cedar - dry but fresh at the very end!
This is a delightful rich, complex wine with tertiary flavours that are mixed with the fresh fruits that still exist in the wine, the silky texture and fine tannins along with its freshness and acidity can be kept for a short time, and enjoyed!
Score : 95
This vintage recently had some cases for sale at auction at Sothebys (24/10/2012), 1 case sold for £423, while the lots of 2 cases sold for £881 ( sold in Bond ).
The Château Sociando-Mallet Estate (
http://www.sociandomallet.com/site.php?langue=en )
The propoerty of
Château Sociando-Mallet sits on the left bank of Bordeaux, in the Haut-Medoc which is north of the Medoc and sits on the river bank of the Gironde enjoying breezes off the river, in the commune of
St Seurin de Cadourne and not far from Lesparre-Médoc, just a few minutes drive north of
St Estèphe and 10 km north of Pauillac.
The property dates from the early 17th century, the estate was the residence of a Basque nobleman named
Sossiondo which has been translated since as Sociando - the first part of the name The later part of the name comes from when the Estate was inherited by a naval captain by the name of
Achille Mallet , and thus the property was renamed
Sociando-Mallet.
It was purchased by
Jean Gautreau in 1969 for francs 250 000 after working for Jean Miailhe for a few years before heading out on his own venture, and was in the area looking for a vineyard for a wealthy Belgian client. It was a dilapidated property and the purchase was the heart ruling the head. The vineyard had been reduced to just a 5 hectares of vines, and several buildings were derelict and there was no cellar, but it was the
terroir stood it apart, it had the same band of gravel that runs beneath the vineyards of
Cos d'Estournel,
Pichon-Lalande,
Léoville-Las-Cases and numerous other leading properties of the left bank. These gravel
croupe slopes away from the buildings at the top of the estate.
He vinified his first vintage with help from an old employee of the estate - and the rest is history!
Over the years more land was purchased financed by his négociant business (which he sold in 2003) eventually exceeding 110 hectares, of which about 90 hectares are planted with vines, though this has been reduced by about 10ha over the last decade keeping the best and replanting has taken place to reposition the Cabernet Sauvignon at the top of the slope (where it has a better chance of ripening - it was at the base of the slope to protect it from the frost).
Today he is joined be his daughter
Sylvie and
Vincent Faure, Sylvie's husband who is technical director of Sociando-Mallet. Vincent studied oenology at the
lycée at
Latour Blanche and then took up a post at the
Pauillac first growth in 1992 where he remained there for six years. It was1998 that he left to take up the position of technical director at Sociando-Mallet.
The varieties planted are 48% Cabernet Sauvignon and 47% Merlot, the remaining 5%Cabernet Franc. The planting is denser than in many other Bordeaux vineyards (although many are catching up), with 8333 vines per hectare, the vines pruned to leave just 6-8 bunches per vines. This means yields per hectare are higher than are found elsewhere, but
Vincent Faure is keen to point out that this reflects a normal yield per vine and a high number of vines per hectare, rather than the over-cropping of each vine. A typical figures may be 80 hl/ha, proof that there is more to ensuring quality than mere numbers
Other interesting observations are :-
- The soils are ploughed rather than grassed over.
- There is no deleafing, despite this being common practice throughout much of Bordeaux, the aim being to increase exposure of fruit to the sun and to help the ventilation of the leaf canopy around the fruit, thus reducing the likelihood of rot.
- In addition there is no green harvesting here, despite this being another common practice to encourage ripening of the fruit towards the end of the growing season, and to increase concentration in the eventual wine.
- And there is no fungicidal spraying at Sociando-Mallet, despite some of these other policies - especially refusal to deleaf - perhaps increasing the likelihood of mildew or rot in the vineyard
- The harvest is manual, and goes over twin sorting tables, each one having a vibrating section and then conveyor belt on which the fruit is hand-sorted. ( Though this was not in operation for the 1996 vintage - see tasting notes )
- The fruit is then mechanically destemmed and pressed before going into the fermentation vessels.
- Natural yeasts are used to increase the character profile of the resulting wines.
- When Jean Gautreau started out in 1969 the fermentations were carried out in the concrete vats that came with the estate, although much larger stainless steel vats were added when the facilities were extended first in 1998 and again more recently in 2008.
- There is temperature control, but temperatures are allowed to climb as high as 33°C to encourage the extraction of tannins.
- The wine is macerated for several weeks before going into oak.
- There are two blendings, one after fermentation when the varieties are blended together, then another after the aging in oak in order to create the final assemblage.
- During the élevage, the wines are racked every six months.
- None of the free-run wines are filtered, although the press wines, if they are used, are lightly filtered.
- The oak regimen at Sociando-Mallet is different to some properties, the grand vin Château Sociando-Mallet (typically 20000 cases per annum) going into 95% new oak, the remaining 5% being left in stainless steel vat - where the portions left in cuve are intended to bring a sense of freshness to the wine. La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet, sees 65-75% new oak, with 25-35% left in vat again to keep the wine fresh. Jean Gautreau has a strong preference for new oak, and after one use, the barrels are sold off.
- Other wines in the portfolio include a special cuvée named for Jean Gautreau seeing its first vintage in 1995 has 100% aging in new oak with malolactic fermentation occuring in oak, and in 2010, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon was used, making this a rare example of a pure Cabernet Sauvignon wine from Bordeaux. In addition there is also L'Autre de Sociando, a special cuvée made for the L'Esprit de Bordeaux range put together by négociant Yvon Mau.
The grand vin is the result of an increasingly strict selection process, with approximately 50% of the production going into the final wine and the balance used in the Croix de Beaucaillou. The 2009 may be the finest example of this cuvee I have yet tasted. Up-front, precocious and generous, it possesses a dense purple color, a big, broad, unctuous texture and abundant notes of creme de cassis and black cherry fruit intertwined with hints of wood smoke, vanillin and earth. This nearly viscous-styled wine can be drunk in 2-3 years or cellared for 15+. 
(2/ 2012)
