I stopped in at Canon this morning to check out one of the stars of the 2015 vintage. I scored it 100 points, a perfect wine. The wine is still such a stunner, showing superb depth and length. The texture is seamless and dense yet it remains agile and fresh.
I remember tasting the 2015 Canon during my month-long tour of Bordeaux for En Primeur, or futures. I was tasting at the office of wine merchant Jeff Davies and the wine was the first flight of about two dozen wines. The Davies tasting was the first of the tour and I tasted 800 wines in total. I smelled the 2015 Canon from the glass and I knew it was perfect. Tasting it confirmed it. (This really shows how great the wine is since it stood out so early on in my tasting.)
Apparently, it was the same for the team of Canon. I spoke this morning to the maître de chais, Stephane Bonasse, and he said he knew right away during the harvest that the 2015 was his best ever. He worked at Canon for 20 years. “I knew it was my best wine ever the minute I tasted it from the vat,” he said.
Indeed, it is the best wine I have tasted from Canon since the great wines of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It gives me the same feeling when I tasted it and felt it on the palate as the great 1947, which I was lucky enough to drink earlier this year; the wine also was produced in a hot and dry year in Bordeaux.
Bonasse explained that they used a few new techniques making the wine because the quality of the grapes harvested was so impeccable including a cold maceration for a couple of days before the alcoholic fermentation and a relatively low amount of new wood, about two thirds. “But the greatness of 2015 Canon is all because of the impeccable quality of the grapes we harvested,” he said.
Here is my tasting note from this morning:
Château Canon St.-Emillion 2015: The purity of fruit is incredible here with intense character of crushed grapes and flowers. Full-bodied, velvety with refined tannins. Great length and beauty. Flamboyant yet refined and precise. Incredible. It’s so balanced and enticing that it makes you want to drink it now. Perfect. 100 points.
Here is my original note of the wine from barrel in March.
Photos from top to bottom:Vineyards of Canon in the distance; Maître de chais, Stephane Bonasse
James Suckling, CEO
