Chateau Garreau Folle Blanche 2015...

Chateau Garreau Folle Blanche 2015 (55.4%): Today I am back with the Chateau Garreau samples after a short break... This one is the one I was most curious of to tell the truth. It is pulled from a single cask (#115) Gregoire Fabre from Chateau Garreau was watching closely for some time. It is distilled 100% from Folle Blanche grapes harvested from a single plot (#305), aged in a new oak cask in their only underground (wet) cellar and the sample vial on my desk is filled at cask strength at 55.4%. And if you think that Chateau Garreau is collecting most of their distillate at about 58% from their column still you can see that this cask has lost only about %2.6 of its alcohol content to angels' share in five years which is extremely low.

Color: Straw, un-oaked Chardonnay color with fast and thick legs around the glass.

Nose: A little mute in the beginning... Breakfast cereals, mineral water and lemon juice. Young single malt Scotch whisky and lemon drops. After adding a generous amount of water: Honey syrup, fresh rosemary leaves and a hot summer morning hike in a pine forest. Citrusy, piney, fresh and quite summery.

Palate: It is a young brandy indeed and a little hot at this abv to be honest. Stainless steel water bottles, chamomile tea and new make spirit. Like 100 Prohibition I tasted earlier this week I am getting some notes which might be driven by relatively smaller virgin oak barrels: Green-wood lumber, ground coriander and ground ginger. Adding water cuts down the alcohol burn but doesn't add too much to the mix: Sour table grapes, green banana peppers and plastic Ziplock containers.

Finish: Medium long with mostly alcohol burn on both sides of the tongue, lemon powder and white pepper.

Overall: It is young, not quite ready for prime time maybe but extremely promising... All the dusty, grainy and citrusy characteristics really reminded me of a young Scotch but I also can taste some secondary notes growing in the background which will need obvioulsy time to develop. Speaking of Scotch whisky-esque qualities one cannot help but think of all the different finishing cask opportunities for this very solid but also young spirit. Just saying... Thanks to Gregoire Fabre and Chateau Garreau for their generosity and providing all these samples and allowing me to work on them.

Price: N/A

83/100