Description
The award-winning Arden Fine Wines in London offers this Petrus wine cost  – Petrus 1943.
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Petrus wine cost – Petrus 1943
The 1943 vintage is often regarded as the best of the World War II era, producing rich and flavourful wines that have aged exceptionally well.
The Petrus 1943 is an excellent and rare vintage of one of the world’s most prestigious wines.
The award-winning Arden Fine Wines in London offers this Petrus wine cost – Petrus 1943.
A brief history of Petrus
Petrus, the most powerful word in wine, conjures up the same allure, the exotic luxury, and the anticipation of vinous excitement.
The great growths of the Médoc firmly established themselves before the name of Petrus first appeared in records in 1837.
The Arnaud family owned the estate then and when Petrus won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.
This rocketed its own name, Petrus, and that of Pomerol to the fore.
The Arnauds started selling the property to Madame Edmond Loubat in 1925.
She acquired the estate in its entirety by the end of the Second World War.
Madame Loubat believed that she should sell her Petrus wine at least at the level of the First Growths.
In this, she was absolutely right, particularly since the Petrus of the time was a mere 7ha (hectares).
She donned her legendary hats and sallied forth to tell the world that they were missing something exceptional.
This formidable woman came over to England for the Coronation in 1953.
Then she sent a case of Petrus wine to Buckingham Palace.
History does not relate the vintage but could it have been the 1947 or the 1949?
Petrus itself received infinite care. Both vineyard and chais benefited from feminine attention to detail.
The Petrus vineyard
The site shines jewel-like, unique in its composition and the underlying reason why Petrus tastes like no other Bordeaux.
Petrus sits on the high terrace of Pomerol on which lies a 20ha island, or buttonhole, of clay.
Through the accidents and acquisitions of ownership, nearly 11ha of this clay falls within the property/
In 1969, they increased the size of Petrus from 7 to 11.4ha when they bought a clay parcel of Château Gazin.
Only the hectare of vineyard now bordering Gazin remains gravelly and thus atypical of Petrus wine.
Another unique feature is the deep-lying hard iron soil known as crasse de fer.
During the Loubat era, the vineyard had a far greater proportion of Cabernet Franc than today.
At that time, it was up to 20% as opposed to the 5% now, which only goes into the blend in very ripe years.
The Moueix regime feels strongly that the colder clay soil needs Merlot.
Therefore it increased the percentage to the 95% we have now.
They practice complantation in vines up to 20 years old, keeping the average age of the vines around 40–45 years.
This mantra at Petrus dates back to the Loubat days when Madame Loubat did not replant after the ferocious 1956 frost but very successfully regrafted onto the existing root.
In 1956, Petrus effectively produced no wine (1 barrel) and the maitre de chais told Christian Moueix that he “ate the whole crop!”.
However, Christian does not favour overdoing complantation as he considers that there is not enough space for the roots to develop.
So, once they have 50% gaps, he prefers to replant the whole block.
The vines planted in the 1980s came from nurseries, but, recently, selection in the mass, after checking for any virus, has become the norm.
Jean-Pierre Moueix
In 1943, Jean-Pierre Moueix began an extraordinary relationship with Petrus and the family business.
He saw the great potential and quality of Petrus and became the sole agent for the property.
He introduced Petrus to America in 1945.
Madame Loubat died in 1961 and for a while, one of her nieces, Madame Lacoste-Loubat, represented the property.
Then, gradually, Moueix acquired all the shares of both her niece and her nephew.
More importantly, Jean-Pierre Moueix’s capable hands managed the estate.
From 1970, Christian Moueix nurtured and made Petrus.
He worked together with the talented Jean-Claude Berrouet as oenologist and Michel Gillet as viticulturist.
After Jean-Pierre Moueix’s death in 2003, Jean-François Moueix became gérant, or manager, of Petrus.
The younger Moueix brother Christian serves as directeur technique.
How they make Petrus
Organic methods thrived at Petrus before they became fashionable.
They ploughed and weeded three to four times a year.
Also, they planted a weed that dries out the soil after rain and which they later ploughed in to act as a natural fertiliser.
Christian Moueix practiced crop thinning as early as 1973.
In a year like 1982, when some other top growths merely contemplated the possibility, this undoubtedly contributed to the quality of Petrus in such an abundant year.
As a result, Petrus virtually never does a saignée, or bleeds the vats.
The total Moueix team of 180 people can be called in from other properties at the optimum moment.
On average, it takes them three afternoons, not necessarily consecutive, to pick Petrus.
This help them to avoid morning dew and enhanced the ripeness and natural alcohol.
The Merlot, of course, has a short “bracket” for picking as, with heat, it ripens so quickly.
In rainy years, they have used helicopters to dry out the crop.
In the torrential conditions of 1992, they employed plastic sheeting to keep the earth dry.
The timing of the harvest remains critical, involving constant walking of the vineyard, observing, and tasting the grapes.
They chew the pips – if they crush easily and taste of almonds, the grapes are ripe.
If the pips are bitter and too crunchy, the grapes have not attained the desired ripeness.
They practice destemming at Petrus (only in 1973 and 1974, 20% of the vats had added stems).
Today’s stemmer-crushers ensure that they do not crush any stems before removal.
Perfectionism at Petrus
Cold macerations do not feature here.
Fermentation takes place in concrete vats followed by a maceration on the skins for 18–25 days.
Normally, fermentation starts at 17/19ºC and goes up to 32ºC, but, in 2003, the upper limit was 29ºC to balance the exceptional conditions.
The malolactic fermentation also takes place in concrete.
The wine then goes into 100% new oak barrels from Demptos, Seguin-Moreau, and Taransaud.
In a lighter year like 1997, they used some barrels from 1995.
Even in stronger years, they monitor everything.
The wine can move out of the 100% new oak into one or two-year-old casks.
Normally, the wine from vines over 10 years old goes into Petrus.
However, one year the production from a “young” block had to wait 18 years.
Trials and experiments at Petrus
As with all great wine properties, an open mind remains vital.
At Petrus, they quietly undertake, adopt, or discard experiments and trials.
They still prefer vertical presses as they consider them more gentle, while horizontal presses “lacerate”.
The winemakers used to include the press wine in the vat to help start the malolactic fermentation.
But recently they have kept it apart, deciding in January whether to add in 5-7%, always identifying the press wine with the original vat from whence it came.
They always eliminate some press wine that has an anchovy taste.
In 1990, on an experimental 2ha, they tried crop-thinning at the beginning of July and at the beginning of August.
At the comparative tasting in summer 1991, they favoured the wine from the early crop thinning by 12 to 5.
However, 1990 was a hot summer, so the experiment was not conclusive.
They now have two sorting tables at Petrus, which lengthen the picking time from 10–12 hours to 20.
Interestingly, in the superlative 1998, they conducted no trie at all!
Petrus bought the table de trie in 2002, as the very difficult flowering that year gave very irregular ripeness.
In 2003, they used the table for eliminating burnt berries.
Perfectionism at Petrus extends to macerating their corks in water, with tasting, testing, and analysing in batches.
These are the mechanics of making Petrus wine.
What does Petrus taste like?
But what of its soul, its “persona”, the individual, idiosyncratic elements of the wine that make it extraordinary?
The exotic, super-spicy profile always presents itself, the tapestry texture, the way mini-explosions of flavour burst upon the palate as it makes contact with the air.
It represents an oriental rather than an occidental wine, eccentric rather than classic.
It gloriously expresses itself.
The terroir triumphantly transcends the grape varieties.
The Merlot has completely taken over the Cabernet Franc but it remains the Petrus we have always known.
(Here, one can compare it with Lafite, which has become far more Cabernet Sauvignon than of yore, but it is still magically Lafite.)
At Petrus, even half a barrel of Cabernet Franc makes a discernible difference when added to 60 barrels of Merlot – usually, they incorporate two to three barrels of Cabernet Franc into the grand vin.
Petrus has the bitter, dark chocolate taste of Merlot rather than the milk chocolate of Cabernet Franc.
Ultimately, Petrus defines, intensifies and remains untamed, both a revelation and a mystery – and infinitely, stunningly good.
The award-winning Arden Fine Wines in London offers this Petrus wine cost – Petrus 1943.
