Published the 11/06/2023 in Our Selection
Certainly the ultimate experience for any passionate person: to create the wine of your imagination, tailor-made, and in your image ! And nothing more logical for My Private French Travel to create its very own private vintage
What enthusiast, lover of great wines, hasn't dreamed one day of creating his own wine, the one that will bring together all the qualities he is looking for?
It is precisely this experience that we lived to create our "Millésime Privé 2018", a unique cuvée from a personal blend, in our name and produced in only 288 bottles. This cuvée has been vinified and aged by the teams of a grand cru classé belonging to the gotha of Bordeaux wines.
This unique and memorable experience, you can also live it through us by becoming a winemaker for the time of a vintage. Create your own private vintage, in your own image or that of your company, to share with your friends and family!
At the beginning of the experiment, a selection of 13 plots of land, all belonging to exceptional terroirs, from renowned properties among 7 prestigious appellations of the Bordeaux vineyard: Canon-Fronsac, Saint-Emilion, Pomerol, Margaux, Saint-Julien, Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe.
We lived this experience with four of us: four friends, passionate about wine and eager to make this dream come true together at the risk of "fighting" to reach the ideal and consensual blend.
To accompany us in the realization of our cuvée, the expertise and advice of a team of confirmed oenologists of a prestigious Pauillac Grand Cru Classé. The same ones who will have the heavy responsibility of the vinification and maturing of our unique cuvée! No worries, we are in good hands.
During this first blending session, and surprisingly enough, we quickly reach a consensus among ourselves. We validate "our" blend at the end of the 8th combination: 30% Merlot (Right Bank) - 20% Cabernet Franc (Right Bank) - 50% Cabernet Sauvignon (Left Bank). Without meaning to, we compose a wine 50% Right Bank - 50% Left Bank, with a significant presence of the 3 dominant grape varieties of the vineyard!
Our basic idea was to create a charming, expressive wine, at the same time pleasant to taste in its young years but also possessing a beautiful complexity, with silky and powerful tannins that augur well for good tastings over time! In short, all the facets of a very great Bordeaux that would bring together in the same bottle the best of both sides of the vineyard!
We are testing the initial blending again after 8 months of ageing. The tasting confirms our initial objective but ... we seem to be missing something to reach the bottle of our dream ! It is then time for a second tasting to make the necessary adjustments.
We tasted again some of the 13 parcels samples. Some of them had evolved from the first session. We made 5 new combinations by successive "small touches - 5% at the time, then less" to finally arrive at what seems to us to be the perfect blend! While keeping the basic balances, we readjust certain proportions between different plots of the same grape variety and appellation. Once again, the influence of the terroir does its work and you notice great differences between the same varietals!
At the 12th combination, our "Private Vintage 2018" was born!
Immortalize the experience in a unique way by creating your own label!
Last step: give our bottle a new label. Here too, this is all custom-made (by Cyrielle, with the support of the design team !). We created our own label that will immortalize this great experience. The design has been thought out around the initials of each of the four of us. The back label tell us more about the story of this extraordinary experience.
The result: at the beginning of October 2020, after about 18 months of ageing in oak barrels and bottling on site, we take delivery of each of our 72 bottles packaged in wooden cases (288 bottles for the four of us). And like any child discovering his gift under the Christmas tree, we are eager to taste together the first and ... a pure moment of happiness and pride!
Mission accomplished: we have created the wine of our dreams ! You may say we are not very objective, but the tasting, despite the youth, was promising, and appreciated by most people who got to try it so far. The length in mouth is particularly impressive.
(Photo de l'étiquette et de la caisse)