The Tb points given to this wine are the world’s most valid and most up-to-date evaluation of the quality of the wine. Tastingbook points are formed by the Tastingbook algorithm which takes into account the wine ratings of the world's best-known professional wine critics, wine ratings by thousands of tastingbook’s professionals and users, the generally recognised vintage quality and reputation of the vineyard and winery. Wine needs at least five professional ratings to get the Tb score. Tastingbook.com is the world's largest wine information service which is an unbiased, non-commercial and free for everyone.
Wine Description
The Story
With its pedigree style, CHATEAU-FIGEAC epitomises the elegance of the great wines of Bordeaux.
The wine’s individual character is drawn from an outstanding, complex terroir, characterised by three Gunzian gravel outcrops. Made from a grape composition of 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Cabernet Franc and 30% Merlot, its Cabernet majority is one of its features.Its unique style gradually shows through and develops over time.
Some vintages, such as the 2001 can be enjoyed in the first years; however, CHATEAU-FIGEAC is recognized for its ability to age for many years. Numerous legendary vintages, such as 1943, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1964, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1989, 1990, 2005, 2009 and 2010 testify to this. This great wine displays a distinctive rich nose that has wonderful aromatic complexity.
On the palate, the Cabernet Sauvignon reveals lovely floral aromas in the first year then, as the wine ages, great structure on the palate. The Cabernet Franc brings lots of freshness in the tannins, and the Merlot contributes roundness and flesh. The attack on the palate is clean, the texture is silky, and the complexity elegant.
The characteristic freshness of FIGEAC is underpinned by great length of flavour. With its long ageing potential, the wine goes on in time to reveal hints of forest floor, leather, cigar-box and liquorice –always with its hallmark elegance.
Vintage 1945
The best vintage in the world – 1947 or 1945? Tastingbook has tasted all the best wines from these two great vintages.
If wine producers from different regions were asked to name the best vintages in their wine history, most would name 1947 or 1945 as one of the greats. If we then compared them, there would probably only be one vintage that most, if not all, producers had named on the list – 1947.
We wanted to test this theory and we tasted them against each other and the winner was 1947 – by a long shot.
The 1947 vintage was a magical vintage. It goes down in history as one of the only vintages that all the well-established quality wine regions in the world were blessed with superb weather conditions. Heatwaves have been experienced all over the world and, for example, all of Europe was blazing under the blazing sun and experiencing a heatwave during the summer. This resulted in very concentrated and very ripe grapes. Growers found it difficult to handle very ripe grapes with high sugar levels because there was a constant risk of bacterial contamination in less hygienic wineries that did not have artificial cooling systems. Since there was no technology to use, many relied on huge blocks of ice to cool the room temperature and even put ice in their fermentation tanks.
This vintage has proven to produce very long-lasting wines from around the world. The wines are marked by a sweet, ripe fruit character and warming alcohol. Due to unhygienic winemaking facilities, many wines exhibit volatile characters. Some might find this a flaw, but for many mature wine lovers, this feature is even a favorite character. However, when purchasing wines from this vintage one should be aware that there is a high level of bottle variation and the risk of having highly volatile wines is remarkably high.
1945 was an exceptional year throughout France, from Côte-Rôtie to Bordeaux. Due to the hot and dry conditions, the grapes were very concentrated and produced an extraordinary, but unfortunately low, yield. The 1945 harvest was an early harvest, beginning on the same date as 1982, September 13. The wines started life with massive levels of tannin and took several decades to develop. Due to the high levels of tannins, many wines still show well today.
