CRITIC REVIEWS
Robert M. Parker, Jr.
The 2008 Cheval Blanc (55% Merlot and 45% Cabernet Franc) is a winner from this underrated, classic vintage. Notes of forest floor, Asian plum sauce, black currants, sweet cherries and spice are followed by a medium to full-bodied wine with deep fruit, admirable purity, and a long, textured finish. There is not a hard edge to this wine, and in all likelihood, it can be drunk now or cellared for two decades.
Neal Martin
Tasted ex-chateau and single blind in Southwold. The Cheval Blanc 2008 is a great wine. Here, this bottle has a pure, elegant bouquet that unfurls with each swirl of the glass. It offers a smorgasbord of red fruits: wild strawberry, a touch of kirsch, cranberry and just a touch of lifted alcohol. The new oak is seamlessly integrated. The palate is medium-bodied with succulent tannins that are ripe and rounded, perhaps belying the sheer weight of its sweet core of fruit. It is a little more ostentatious than I expected and blind, I conjectured whether it could be Chateau Angelus? Superb. Tasted January 2012.