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Description

Cuvée Raphaël is the flagship wine of Parenchère.
It bears the name of Raphaël GAZANIOL, who renovated the Parenchère estate in 1958.

It is produced from a selection of the finest plots of the estate, from vines that are more than 40 years old on average.
The yields from the vines selected for this wine are particularly small: around 40 HL per hectare.

It is usually a blend of :
50% Merlot
50% Cabernet Sauvignon
This assemblage can, however, vary from vintage to vintage depending on the success of a particular grape variety.

Ageing: This wine is aged exclusively in barrels made of oak from the Forest of Tronçais, 25% of which are new on average depending on the vintage.

The wine is aged for 12 months on fine lees, without racking or exposure to air. However, we use the (“micro-oxygenation”) technique, sending fine bubbles through the barrels.
In this way, the wine’s fruit and elegance are perfectly preserved.

Characteristics : Our Cuvée Raphaël is always a very dense, very concentrated wine with elegant tannins that stand out, but are mellow and smooth. They are elegantly woody, but not excessively to leave plenty of room for the fruit.

Ideal drinking period : from 4 to 10 years
This wine can be appreciated since its first year of bottling, but will better express its elegance and complexity since its fourth year of ageing.
It can improve for about 10 – 12 years, and possibly more according to the vintage.

We wanted to demonstrate with this blend how our terroirs of the Sainte Foy la Grande region can be expressed, which, although little known, can hold their own alongside the finest Bordeaux wines.

Additional information