The 2012 Aile d’Argent is a very pretty and stylish wine and clearly shows what a lovely vintage this is for dry white wines on the Gironde. The blend this year is thirty-seven percent semillon and sixty-three percent...
The 2012 Aile d’Argent is a very pretty and stylish wine and clearly shows what a lovely vintage this is for dry white wines on the Gironde. The blend this year is thirty-seven percent semillon and sixty-three percent sauvignon blanc, which makes the Aile d’Argent quite different from wines such as Pavillon Blanc de Margaux, as it incorporates a substantial percentage of semillon into its cépages. The bouquet is deep, complex and wide open, offering up scents of fig, pear, beeswax, grassy tones, a touch of petrol and a deft base of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, crisp and quite long, with good complexity, fine focus and a bit of youthful wood still in need of incorporation on the classy finish. Like so many of the top white wines in 2012, this wine is quite open and accessible on both the nose and palate, with lovely framing acidity, and once the new wood is fully integrated into the wine, it will drink beautifully. (Drink between 2014-2022)