Château Cheval Blanc, Le Petit Cheval Blanc, 2025
Château Cheval Blanc, Le Petit Cheval Blanc, 2025
- 75cl
- 14%
- White Still
- Merlot, Cabernet Franc
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Est. delivery in 2028.
We find ourselves with the second label from one of Saint-Émilion's most revered estates, where Merlot and Cabernet Franc dance together on the legendary plateau. Le Petit Cheval Blanc captures the house style in a more approachable format, offering the estate's signature elegance and mineral precision without requiring decades of patience.
Cheval Blanc's 37 hectares sit on a unique geological formation where Saint-Émilion meets Pomerol, with three distinct soil types. The famous graves (gravel) and sables (sand) provide excellent drainage and give the wines their distinctive mineral backbone and elegance. Some parcels have clay subsoils that add depth and structure. This unusual terroir, combined with the estate's proximity to Pomerol, creates wines that are distinctly different from other Saint-Émilion estates.
Saint-Émilion Grand Cru is the premium appellation within Saint-Émilion, with stricter yield limits and longer ageing requirements than the basic Saint-Émilion AOC. The classification system is unique in Bordeaux, being revised every decade, with Cheval Blanc holding the top Premier Grand Cru Classé A status alongside Ausone. The Right Bank's Merlot-based wines are generally more approachable when young than their Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated Left Bank counterparts, but the best age magnificently.
The 2025 Bordeaux vintage emerged from one of the most demanding growing seasons in recent memory — the earliest budbreak since 1989, June temperatures second only to 2003 since records began, and an unusually early harvest beginning in August for the whites. Conditions that should have produced heavy, overripe wines. They didn't. Decanter's Georgie Hindle, who tasted close to 200 wines ahead of the formal campaign, describes "exceptional concentration, aromatic purity and a freshness that contradicts the record-breaking heat.
The early critical consensus places 2025 stylistically between the precision of 2020 and the structure of 2016, with the brightness of 2023 — a combination that suggests a very serious vintage indeed. Yields are dramatically low, the smallest crop since 1991, with production across the Gironde running around 15% below the five-year average. The quality is here. There simply isn't very much of it.
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Château Cheval Blanc
