The 1947 Château Cheval Blanc, "the most celebrated wine of the 20th century," is considered by many to be the pinnacle of wines and widely coveted. Last year at a Christie's auction "a case of the '47 sold for $147,000, or just over $12,000 per bottle." How it came to be is even more remarkable considering it was produced during a particularly inhospitable year for wineries:
[The] weather that summer was almost Biblical in its extremity. July and August were blazing hot months, and the conditions turned downright tropical in September. By the time the harvest began, the grapes had more or less roasted on the vine, and the oppressive heat followed the fruit right into the cellar. Because wineries were not yet temperature-controlled, a number of producers experienced stuck fermentations—that is, the yeasts stopped converting the sugar in the grape juice into alcohol (yeasts, like humans, tend to wilt in excessive heat). A stuck fermentation can leave a wine with significant levels of both residual sugar and volatile acidity; enough of the latter can ruin a wine, and more than a few vats were lost to spoilage in '47.
And yet, it produced an elite of the elite wines.
Read more to find out if the '47 Cheval lives up to its reputation.