2011 Les Hauts de Smith Blanc Pessac Leognan

Les Hauts de Smith white 2011 is created during the blending process of the Grand Vin Château Smith Haut Lafitte white 2011. The different lots of with wines used to produce Les Hauts de Smith white 2011 were treated with just as much care as the lots of white wines that went into the Grand Vin.

Therefore the winemaking techniques used were identical from the harvest to the vinification and ageing. This wine is 100 % Sauvignon blanc, the yields here are around 30 hectolitres per hectare before the production is divided into 2 wines: Château Smith Haut Lafitte and Les Hauts de Smith.

Grapes are hand-picked into small crates and pressed in a pneumatic winepress (to treat the fruit as gently as possible) with cold static settling and fermentation in French oak barrels (50% new oak). The wine is aged on its lees in barrels with bâtonnage (stirring of the lees) for 10 months.

The 2011 vintage from Bordeaux is now regarded as one of the best in the last 20 years for both the sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac and the dry whites of Graves and Pessac-Leognan. The vintage 2011 can be analyzed dividing the year into two opposite weather phases that were determinant for the white grapes characteristics:

First period: in advance compared to regular Bordeaux standards, the warm and dry weather induced an early vintage with harvest starting on the 18th of August.

Second period: a summer with a quite low temperature average that allowed a slow maturation of the grapes preserving their natural acidity. These two phases were the key to the vintage for vine-growers and winemakers who took great care of the grapes in the first period and waited for pe rfect slow maturation in the second period.