Bottles produced: 120,000
Grapes: 51% Cabernet Sauvignon, 49% Merlot
Yield: 33 hL/ha
Alcohol: 14%
Format: 750mL
Drink from/to: 2020-2030
Price UK: £140
Price US: $190
The vintage: Billed as a brilliant vintage 2009 produced Bordeaux wines with concentration and power. The year began on the front foot with a warm spring – tempered slightly by a mild but rainy April – and really picked by in may with fine weather and excellent sunshine leading to swift and even flowering. Summer was extremely warm and even; this meant that veraison, like flowering, was relatively uniform, although there were some issues with lack of rainfall, particularly as things headed into September and the sunshine kept on coming.
The wine: Fruit is hand-harvested and destemmed ‘berry by berry’ before a low-temperature cold soak and fermentation in 30-70 hL wooden vats. Fermentation takes 30-40 days then the wine is run off into French oak where it goes through MLF and matures for 18 months.
Decanter review/reaction (2010 vintage): An early-ripening and generous wine in an early-ripening and generous year, this is full of the exuberance that it demonstrated when young. The terroir is starting to exert its influence now, with a lovely pull back on the finish as the tannins step up. It’s still youthful and buttoned down but the fruit is exotically ripe and really starting to come into its prime, with traces of heavy black pepper spice. Extremely good quality, if vintage led. 95 points – Jane Anson, February 2019
