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Wine Description
The Story
Henri Lurton believes that a great wine should combine structure with elegance and possess great aromatic purity. Château Brane Cantenac’s aromatic qualities have been acknowledged for a great many years. Its bouquet develops over time. The more the wine ages, the greater power it develops.
Brane’s greatest asset is the amazing quality of its historic terroir, because at the end of the day wine is made in the vineyard. This is why Henri Lurton attaches such great importance to vine canopy work, very strict selection and moderate yields (an average yield of 45hl/ha). Contrary to what may have been written about the estate, Brane produces a very limited quantity of First Wine. Scarcely a third of the production carries the famous gold and black label!
Wine Information
Weather conditions :
-A mild autumn, then a harsh, dry winter, especially during February (-10°C compared with the seasonal average over the last decade)
-Cool and very rainy weather in April as vines began shooting.
-An abnormally wet month of June and start to the summer.
-The hottest August since 2003.
-A severe summer drought: total rainfall between August 1st and September 22nd was only 7mm (0.27 inches).
-A wet end to the month of September, with heavy rains.
In the vineyard :
-A slow shooting of the vines in April, because of cool and rainy weather conditions
-Uneven vegetation growth was observed among Merlot vines.
-A quite late flowering on May 26th.
-Some problems of coulure (shot berries) on old Merlot vines planted in gravel soils.
-A very high risk of downy mildew and powdery mildew during the month of June.
-Vine canopy management work was adapted to the vigour of each plot of vines.
-Water deficit was accentuated by the absence of summer rainfall, bringing about uneven veraison on some bunches, which were eliminated manually at the end of August.
-18 hectares (44 acres) of the vineyard grown organically, which represents 25% of the surface area.
Harvest and vinification :
-The picking began with the youngest Merlot on September 27th. It continued with the old Merlot vines from October 1st to 4th. This grape variety gave very round, very aromatic wines.
-The Cabernet Sauvignon was harvested from October 5th to 15th. The wines are powerful, balanced and dense.
-The Cabernet Franc suffered from the vintage’s weather conditions. Though harvested late (October 12th), it wasn’t included in the blend for the Grand Vin on account of unsatisfactory levels of ripeness.
-The Carmenère, which was harvested on October 16th, didn’t ripen as well as in 2011, be-cause of the wet weather conditions.
-The harvesting went ahead at a lively pace, enabling the crop to be brought in before the heavy October rains could affect the perfect health of the berries.
-Extraction was enhanced through délestages (rack and return) and the use of Parsec vinifica-tion robots.
Yield: 45.5 hectolitres per hectare
The 2012 harvest :
Summary of the 2012 vintage :
To fully understand this 2012 vintage, we need to ignore the adverse spring conditions and focus on the very favourable summer weather. The conditions in the vineyard were not dissim-ilar to those of 2010 and especially to those of 2000. Getting the harvesting date right was crucial in order to get the very best out of fully ripe grapes, without endangering their health by allowing the rain at the end of September and in October to take its toll. Any overconfi-dence or willingness to harvest in extreme conditions of over-ripeness was severely punished.
This year once again the great early-ripening terroirs came out on top and produced wines of high quality.
Henri Lurton’s analysis of the 2012 vintage :
The fact that we included 68% of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend of Brane-Cantenac bears witness to its beautiful maturity, thanks to the ‘early’ terroir it grows on, and to the work that was done in the ahead vineyard.
But it is also the proof that the technological choices we made regarding the picking, hauling and sorting of the harvest, favoring a perfect selection, not to mention the swiftness of the operations, were indeed excellent.
Vintage 2012
The 2012 Bordeaux vintage report.
The 2012 Bordeaux vintage is a year for vineyard management and workers. Call it a winemakers vintage, or change your tune and call it vineyard managers vintage. Either descriptor works perfectly. Wineries with the financial capacity to take the necessary measures in the vineyards during the season, coupled with the willingness to severely downgrade unripe grapes, will produce the best wines. Even then, it will be a difficult vintage with small quantities of wine. From start to finish, the 2012 Bordeaux vegetative season and harvest were stressful for the winemakers, the vines and with the grapes being vinified, the winemakers.
The 2012 Bordeaux vintage did not get off to a good start. After a cold winter and a wet spring, the April rains soaked the Bordeaux wine region. After the April rains, there were outbreaks of mildew, which required spraying. The month of May was warmer than April. Things calmed down a bit in June. All this resulted in late and uneven flowering. This resulted in small clusters of berries that ripened at different times, lowering quantities and requiring serious work in the vines and intensive sorting at harvest.
Although a growing season is never over until it is, uneven flowering never bodes well. Late flowering pushed back the entire vintage by 2 to 3 weeks, depending on the château. Generally speaking, late harvests are not generally a harbinger of good things to come.
If everything that happened up to the end of June didn't offer what happened next offered additional challenges with the 2012 Bordeaux vintage. After an average July, Bordeaux experienced a heat wave torrid weather and drought in August and September which stressed the vines, particularly the young vines. At one point, temperatures soared to 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees! Other days crossed 100 degrees. It was extremely hot and dry. The vines stopped and the vintage was on track to be even later than expected. Towards the end of September, things improved with the much-hoped-for combination of warm days, cool nights and desperately needed rain, which helped nourish the vines. The first few days of October offered reasonably warm temperatures during the day, coupled with cooler weather at night for growers with Merlot ready to pick.
In the Médoc, you had to hurry and wait. Tom Petty could have exploded with “Waiting is The Hardest Part” because producers had to wait because Cabernet Sauvignon had difficulty maturing. It was already October. Conventional wisdom says that at one point there was little to gain by waiting and more to lose, so the 2012 Bordeaux harvest began to take place. Some estates began picking young Merlot in late September, but most held back until around October 1, and a few producers waited a week or more. Most growers brought in all their fruit by mid-October.
Pomerol is usually the first appellation to harvest, due to their Merlot dominated vines. It is interesting to note that the picking took place simultaneously on the left bank on October 1st. Many properties in Pessac Léognan started their harvest before Pomerol. Château Haut Brion began work on their young Merlot vines on September 17th and Château Haut Bailly was not far behind, with a start date of September 27th. Most castles were in the thick of things on October 4, although Domaine de Chevalier waited until October 8.
While the pleasant, cooler weather was initially forecast to continue, on October 8 things changed quickly when massive amounts of rain fell across the entire Bordeaux region. With accompanying temperatures in the mid-60s and higher in some areas, winemakers were concerned about the potential for Botrytis, due to the humid tropical conditions. At this point, the fruit had to be picked, regardless of the state of ripeness. Like last year with the 2011 Bordeaux vintage, maturation was uneven. It wasn't just the bunches that weren't ripening, individual grapes in bunches reached varying degrees of ripeness, making sorting more important than ever. Optical sorting was used more than ever with the 2012 Bordeaux harvest.