Château de Valandraud 1994

Château Valandraud is the final achievement of hard work from a couple with a passion for wine, Jean-Luc Thunevin and his wife Murielle Andraud. Having become highly successful wine merchants in the Saint-Emilion area, their burning ambition was to own their own vineyard and make their own wine. Little by little, they bought up several parcels of vines. The name of the growth is both geographical (Val for Vale of Fongaban) and sentimental (Andraud being Murielle's name). That was how Château Valandraud came to be. Jean-Luc Thunevin decides the harvest date once the grapes have reached the optimal maturity. For the winemaking, he adopted Burgundy’s technique of punching off the cap in the fermenting vat (pigeage) and stirring the lies in the oak barrel, in order to get the maximum extraction from his wines. He does no (re?)fining or filtration, just racking barrel to barrel every three months. There were only 8,998 bottles produced in 1994.

Decanted three hours. The 1994 Valandraud was a skillful effort from this difficult vintage. A good, deep, and bright ruby colour. Excellent nose, sound and open with ripe black-cherry, vanilla and cedar aromas. Well balanced and complex on the palate with roasted coffee, chocolate, earth, and sweet tannin flavours all abundent, the intensity of fruit was preposterous. Still quite a hard and tough wine. The finish was long and leathery with a nice dryness and rich, earthy and new oakflavours. Needs time, consume this over next 10 to 15 years.

Tasted in August 2019. Rough edges, tannin is strong and acidity is strong as well. Some time is required here to soften the sharp corners and get this wine more admirable for the consumer.

Intense garnet red colour with almost black core. Very densely woven, liquorice, cigar box, berry jam. On the palate fine acidity, tannins well integrated, restrained fruit, liquorice in the finish. A massive style, however no great complexity.