Archive Releases
23 June 2010
This morning begins where we left off yesterday with an extraordinarily over-priced Château Figeac @ £1,800.00 IB per case... James Suckling awards a whopping 97-100 however, it's a bonkers price and impossible to justify.
Over in Saint Emilion we can offer the controversial Château Pavie @ £2,150.00... Super wine and a relative bargain!
Robert Parker 96-100 "Another brilliant effort from Gerard Perse, this great vineyard (now just over 90 acres in size with the average age of the vines 45 years) was cropped at 28 hectoliters per hectare. It obviously missed all the damaging hail in mid-May of 2009, and was harvested between October 5 and 15. Everything here is done with extraordinary gentleness and precision. The result is a powerful, full-bodied, remarkably intense wine that is black/purple in color. It will require considerable patience, much like 2000 and 2005. It displays enormous creme de cassis and boysenberry fruit with some cherries, spice box, and crushed rock in the background. It is intense, with loads of minerality, huge extraction, massive power, yet again, the vintage character seems to have given it a freshness and vibrancy despite the wine's obvious viscosity. The minimum patience required is at least a decade, as this is another 40-year wine from Gerard Perse"
Over in Pauillac we can offer the highly rated Château Pichon Comtesse Lalande @ £1,400.00 IB per case... Demand is huge and allocations restricted – Revert ASAP if you would like some.
96-98 Robert Parker "The blend for the 2009 Pichon Lalande is dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, somewhat unusual at this estate which usually has more Merlot in the blend. As stated previously, the Cabernet Sauvignon reached levels of ripeness and intensity of flavor in 2009 never seen before in Bordeaux! The final blend of 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot and a pH of 3.8 combines the best of a vintage such as 1996, in terms of structure, freshness, and precision, with the best of 1982, in terms of opulence, power, unctuosity, and thickness. The opaque purple-colored 2009 exhibits an intoxicatingly intense nose of red and black fruits, subtle smoke, charcoal, forest floor, and a hint of flowers. Unusually full-bodied for a wine from this estate as well as unctuously textured, voluptuous, and incredibly pure and precise, this dazzling wine should be drinkable at an early age, and evolve for 30+ years"
95-98 James Suckling "Wow. This has an incredible complexity on the nose of currant, spice, mineral and flowers. Full-bodied, with a great density of fruit and tannins, yet polished and beautiful. This could be the new 1982 from here. Made from 75 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 20 percent Merlot and 5 percent Petit Verdot"
93-96 Neal Martin "A limpid deep purple colour. This has a very fragrant nose, not quite as well defined as Pichon Baron, but very elegant and graceful with blackberry, raspberry leaf, pencil lead, graphite and wild hedgerow. Very pure and feminine. Second bottle at the UGC is actually better...much more precision here, the high proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon (75%) really showing through. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins, very compact, not as expansive as other wines, much more conservative than I was expecting, but very graceful with an unerring sense of symmetry. I cannot help feeling that the wine would benefit from a greater percentage of Merlot, especially on the finish, but over time is does expand in the glass, becoming more and more supple, with a sense of Cabernet invoked authority on the finish. This should coalesce beautifully by time of bottling"