2014 Vintage In 2014, each month was surprising in terms of weather conditions. It was sometimes stressful, often demanding but it revealed the strengths of our Bio Precision work to cope with these constraints. Within-plot day to day monitoring was crucial and what a delight in the first days of September to witness the grapes reaching slowly their optimum maturity under the sun of an exceptional Indian summer. An ideal context which allowed us to take our time to harvest plot by plot according to degrees of maturity to vinify “terroir entities” separately in small vats at the gravity operated vat room of the Château.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte white “The wine already offers a complex and profound aroma expression of citrus and yellow fruits, sign of great maturity. We find pomelo, yellow grapefruit, vine peach, fresh apricot and mango and floral notes too such as lime tree and acacia combining with more delicate notes of sweet spices (star anise) and empyreumatic notes. The mouth is wide and tense, with a franc direct attack followed by concentration and matter revealing an unctuous, rich, fat wine structured by a great acidity that gives dynamism and great length. The finale is fantastic, saline, aromatic, refreshing with an explosion of white fruits, flowers, spices and smoke. This wine presents the profile of great whites, with bright minerality, salinity and lovely complexity.”

Château Smith Haut Lafitte red “This wine is very dark, almost black. The first nose is quite discreet, very black, wild blackberry and blackcurrant, then through aeration it opens completely and offers the power of a full body of black fruits, red fruits, spices, pepper, liquorice and delicate notes of flint stone. The mouth is tense and round thanks to a great acidity balanced with a remarkable concentration and beautiful tannic structure. The wine is structured, dense and rich with great tension and energy. The aroma palette in mouth if close to that of the nose with cherry, blackcurrant, wild blackberry, liquorice, zan, cinnamon and a great minerality of flint stone.”

“June-July tears of rain; August the smile comes back after the summer tides; September-October the exquisite warmth

of a beautiful Indian summer; March 2015 have a taste, it is not 2010 but each week we are getting closer.”

Florence Cathiard - Owner

« 2014 is at each tasting more promising! »

Daniel Cathiard - Owner

“While tasting grape berries in September and October, I was humming this melody from Joe Dassin, thanking the sky for this wonderful gift, foreseeing great maturity of the grapes and beautiful tastings to come.”

Fabien Teitgen - Technical Director

« The market is eagerly expecting this vintage, SHL shall be there. »

Ludovic Fradin - Commercial Director

Climatology

2014: surprises every month, meticulous vineyard monitoring and ideal harvest conditions.

Mild and rainy winter recharging groundwater tables and inducing an early budbreak.

Quite cool contrasting May slowing down the vine but early flowering at the end of the month.

Sunny rainy June with a strong regrowth of the vine and weeds and cool humid July with 16 days of rain causing cryptogammic pressure on the vine and heterogeneous veraison.

Slightly cooler and dry August: more peaceful and serene ripening of the berries, preserving their acidity.

Exceptional Indian summer: September and October recorded 2°C more and two times less rain than the average since 2000. Days at 30°C and nights at 16°C gave ideal conditions to perfect the berries maturity while preserving their acidity.

Measurements performed by a weather station located at the heart of Château Smith Haut Lafitte vineyard

Major Vine Growing Steps

2014

Very early budbreak, early flowering, classical veraison for the whites and long

veraison for the reds

Budbreak +/- 25 March

Flowering 25 March to 6 June

Veraison whites +/- 20 July & reds 8 to 25 August

Measurements performed in our vineyard by Fabien François Fort, Chef de Culture at Château Smith Haut Lafitte

Harvest

The earliness of the vintage vanished with the coolness of the summer, leading to quite classical harvest dates.

Young vines - white

Sauvignon blanc

Semillon

Young vines

reds

Sauvignon gris

Merlot Cabernet sauvignon

Cabernet

franc

May

freshness

Wonderful

Indian summer Mild and rainy winter

Sunny rainy

June

Cool dry

August

Petit

verdot

Cool humid July

Vinification

Ideal harvest conditions gave us the pleasure to organize picking with our NDVI maps through homogeneous zones, breaking the plots down, the terroir zones: a delight. We really took our time to do things the best way possible. The harvest lasted 45 days (23 days in 2013), bringing grapes under optimum conditions to the reception area lines of SHL vat room and the Stealth Cellar both using the delicate vibration destemming and the optical sorting technologies coupled with manual sorting so that only perfect berries are conveyed to the vats.

Vinification of the reds: gravity vatting, fermentation of whole berries in small oak vats at 29°C with manual pigeages, punching down of the cap, ageing lot by lot on the lees for 18 months in barrels.

Vinification of the whites: direct pressing of the berries in neutral atmosphere to prevent from oxygen contact and preserve full aromatic potential, fermentation in barrels, ageing on the lees 12 months with bâtonnages.

Average yields: 30 hl/ha for the whites and 35 hl/ha for the reds before selection of the different wines.

Barrels made at the Château’s cooperage with a selection of woods from the greatest oak forests of France.

“Bio-Precision”

For almost 25 years, our Bio-Precision work at the Château has gathered the required tools, techniques and savoir-faire to produce wines that are true to their terroir and to preserve it: because it all comes from the terroir. After the horse ploughing of fragile plots, the plantation of kilometres of hedges, the natural weeds, the organic compost, the plantation of a rootstock mother vine on the la Lande island, the mapping of the terroir measuring the electric resistivity of the soil, the satellite imagery, the construction of the Stealth Cellar and the farm emphasizing on renewable energies… it is today the circular economy that inspires Fabien, Florence and Daniel. So the most advanced technologies play a role at SHL: after the prototype machine recycling the CO2 released during the fermentation of the wines, this year we implemented the on-board NDVI mapping which allowed us with the soil mapping to monitor the vine development thanks to its leaves cover, stock by stock. Finally 2014 is the year in which we opened SHL new cooperage, another tool within the Bio-Precision, rewarding and further carrying on the hard work of 20 years of cooperage savoir-faire at Château Smith Haut Lafitte, for every barrel to be specific to the wine it will contain; and for 2014 vintage, heats were soft and long.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte blends

Cab. Sauv. Merlot Cab. Franc Petit Verdot % New Barrels Château Smith Haut Lafitte 62 30 6 2 65 Les Hauts de Smith 50 50 - - 20 Le Petit Haut Lafitte 60 40 - - 20

Sauv. Blanc Semillon Sauv. Gris % New Barrels Château Smith Haut Lafitte 90 5 5 50 Les Hauts de Smith 100 - - 50 Le Petit Haut Lafitte 80 20 - 50

Château Cantelys and Château Le Thil blends

Cab. Sauv. Merlot Cab. Franc Petit Verdot % New Barrels Château Cantelys 70 30 - - 20 Château Le Thil - 100 - - 30

Sauv. Blanc Semillon Sauv. Gris % New Barrels Château Cantelys 50 45 5 50

Analysis

% Alc Vol pH

Cabernet Sauvignon et Franc 12,2 - 12,8 3,7 - 3,8

Merlot 12,4 - 14,5 3,6 - 3,7

Petit Verdot 13,2 3,9

Sauvignon Blanc 12,4 - 13,8 3 - 3,2

Sauvignon Gris 13,9 3,1

Semillon 12,8 3,2

Production Breakdown

Your tasting notes

Château Smith Haut Lafitte

Grand Cru Classé de Graves - Pessac-Léognan - 33650 Martillac - France Tel: +33 (0) 5 57 83 11 22 - Fax: +33 (0) 5 57 83 11 21

Commercial Contact: l.fradin@smith-haut-lafitte.com Reservation Contact: visites@smith-haut-lafitte.com

More information on www.smith-haut-lafitte.com Watch the 2014 harvest video

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