Beschreibung:

Château Figeac I am glad to have tasted all these vintages every year with Thierry Manoncourt. He was a 'grand Monsieur', very aware of the greatness of his terroir and of his wines and, like his daughter Hortense Idoine-Manoncourt who succeeded him after his passing in 2010, an eminent and very qualified agronomist. At the end of each tasting visit, he would have us file past a table where all the latest reviews were open at the relevant page and he would point out those where Figeac was equal or better than the First Growths. He would then recount how Figeac's vineyard occupies three of the five gravel terroirs of the Saint Emilion plateau, sharing them with Cheval Blanc, and how both wines are accordingly planted to Cabernet. He was immensely proud of his wines and rightly so for it was he who, as from 1947, had conducted all the experiments in vineyard and cellar that had allowed the 'Figeac style' to exist. He would have been devastated if he had lived long enough to receive the news in 2012 that his dear Figeac had been refused Grand Cru Classé A status. His descendants were also shocked by the decision but decided to react and, working closely with the recently promoted Frédéric Faye as director and a new team of consultants, his ambitions have been multiplied, culminating in organic status for the vineyard and a brand new state-of-the-art cellar for the '19 vintage. So now I taste with Frédéric, a disarmingly frank and switched-on guy who knows exactly where the estate is going. He came to Figeac as a trainee at a very young age, then Thierry kept him on first as vineyard manager, then as technical manager, so he has come up through the ranks, all the time working closely with the owner. He defined the Figeac taste recently as being made of little ripe red fruits, cassis, spring flowers and a great spicy kind of finesse with a point of smoke and graphite, and, with age, a signature theme of menthol ; and the structure as very firmly Cabernet that is always just saved from strictness by a suave kind of fleshiness. The wines of the 90s all have this noticeable strictness and classicism about them, reflecting great finesse and a lovely tightness, the '95, Thierry's fiftieth vintage, commemmorated by a special surround to the label, being the fleshiest and probably the best of the decade. The '05, tasted recently, has a thicker Merlot covering to the more subtle red fruit of the Cabernets. Knowing the château's ambitions, some interpreted this as a step towards a change in the style of Figeac but this was always totally denied by Thierry who was always striving for progress rather than for change. The new team continues in the same vein. They see their quest for excellence as one of fining down the traditional style into greater precision rather than any kind of turn-around. Château Figeac 1982 Saint-Emilion, 1er grand cru classé In a twelve-bottle original wooden case. Good appearance. Levels: base of neck or better 6 bottles per lot