Bordeaux 2022

Tasted April 2023. Attractive, fragrant nose with ginger, saffron, and honey on the nose. Lemon peel and juicy peach on the palate, with more ginger and honey adding to the viscous texture.

Tasted April 2023. Fresh, floral and elegant with bright lemon, clementine, peel, floral notes and richer peach fruit. This has some richness at its core but remains lifted and refreshing. Waxy and pithy in texture. There's salinity and stony notes on the finish. A very impressive white from the 2022 vintage.

Tasted April 2023. Sweet citrus and some apricot fruit. Sweet on the palate but not overly so, retains some fresh fruit character. Nice seam of acidity throughout unlike other Sauternes this vintage. Not a lot of botrytis character but some savoury hints and marmalade.

Tasted April 2023. Very ripe, with a viscous texture and opulent, exotic fruit flavours with pithy notes as the palate continues.

Tasted April 2023. 100% Semillon. Incredibly golden colour considering its youth. This has incredible concentration and purity, with masses of depth and richness. There are some mineral flavours and more bitter orange peel cutting through that, creating a balanced and beautifully long finish.

Tasted April 2023. 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc. Complex and energetic with lots of layered aromatic blue fruit and raspberry. Red cherry, black cherry and plum make a juicy, concentrated mid-palate and there are cooler, saline notes towards the finish.

Tasted April 2023. 66% Merlot, 34% Cabernet Franc. 14.8% abv. Chateau de Ferrand has been going through a renaissance, increasing their proportion of Cabernet Franc and showcasing this expressive clay-limestone terroir. They have the second highest spot in St-Emilion, behind Troplong Mondot. This is a St-Emilion estate on the rise, and their 2022 shows lots of frangrant, pure red and black berry fruit, with subtle coffee, tobacco and pepper complexity. The tannins are fine and there's plenty of stony freshness. This is layered, expressive, powerful but refreshing.

Tasted April 2023. 40% Cabernet Franc, 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot. A spectacular 2022 with a record 70% whole bunch used this year. Gentle extraction, lower fermentation temperatures and careful use of new oak (replaced with large old casks) has left this year’s Carmes Haut Brion silky, pure and very fresh. There’s a taut, chalky feel on the palate, with fresh pepper and mint adding complexity.

Tasted April 2023. Fragrant on the nose with blackcurrant, bramble and violet. Rich on the palate with structured, ripe tannins and smoky, earthy hints.

Tasted April 2023. 14% abv. This stunning, tiny St-Emilion property is still completely under the radar, and in 2022 it completely blew us away. It's floral, ripe and silky, and especially powerful in this vintage. It retains its characteristic chalky freshness and you can see the hints of intense truffle that emerge with a few years in bottle. You will not regret discovering this brilliant family estate.

Tasted April 2023. 100% Merlot. Anne-Laurence, who makes Chateau Marsau, has further increased the use of foudres this vintage to 80%. The remaining 20% is in old barrels, amphora and vats. There's an incredible amount of texture and savoury-tinged fruit on the palate as a result. Fragrant and lifted on the nose, and linear with lots of the chalky, refreshing salinity we love in Marsau. Ripe and focused tannins, present but fine and silky. Yields here were low but the wine really shows the benefits of their regenerative approach in the vineyard. This is a very expressive wine that sings of its people and place.

Tasted April 2023. 100% Merlot. Anne-Laurence, who makes Chateau Marsau, has further increased the use of foudres this vintage to 80%. The remaining 20% is in old barrels, amphora and vats. There's an incredible amount of texture and savoury-tinged fruit on the palate as a result. Fragrant and lifted on the nose, and linear with lots of the chalky, refreshing salinity we love in Marsau. Ripe and focused tannins, present but fine and silky. Yields here were low but the wine really shows the benefits of their regenerative approach in the vineyard. This is a very expressive wine that sings of its people and place.

Tasted April 2023. 100% Merlot. Anne-Laurence, who makes Château Marsau, has further increased the use of foudres this vintage to 80%. The remaining 20% is in old barrels, amphora and vats. There's an incredible amount of texture and savoury-tinged fruit on the palate as a result. Fragrant and lifted on the nose, and linear with lots of the chalky, refreshing salinity we love in Marsau. Ripe and focused tannins, present but fine and silky. Yields here were low but the wine really shows the benefits of their regenerative approach in the vineyard. This is a very expressive wine that sings of its people and place.

Tasted April 2023. 60% Cabernet Franc, 35% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. Pure blackcurrant and blackberry fruit. Ripe but grippy tannins. Lots of concentration and deep fruit flavours at the core with refreshment from the cool, chalky, saline freshness.

Tasted April 2023. 80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc from their two vineyard sites. Intense with limestone character with mineral notes mingling with all the other rich, black fruit flavours. Salty and full of crushed oyster shell sensations on the finish. Crunchy black fruit texture with some violets and aromatic blue fruit. Well integrated spice, with pepper, licorice and clove. A brilliant wine from Jacques Thienpont and his team, a more than worthy stablemate of Le Pin.

Tasted April 2023. Soft and generous with lots of bramble and woody herbs on the nose, smooth tannins and velvet texture on the palate. There's a subtle smoky note towards the finish.

Tasted April 2022. Very Cabernet-driven this year with cassis, smoke, graphite and firm, open and delineated tannins in a medium-bodied frame. There's plenty of juicy black fruit on the palate, then fresh saline notes and woody herbs on the finish.

Tasted April 2023. 14.5% 50% new oak. 75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. Picked from the 8th September. Round and ripe fruit along with some crunchier raspberry fruit on the palate. Aromatic and bright on the nose, restrained and tightly wound on the palate. Lots of structure with grippy Cabernet tannins and some subtle creamy, nutty notes coming across.

Tasted April 2023. 14.2%. Quite possibly the best Mauvesin Barton we've tasted, the 2022 has a lovely frangrant, juicy character, with expressive, ripe, black fruit, floral notes and spice. It's open and delicious now, but there's structure and complexity here to age.

Tasted April 2023. 14.2%. Quite possibly the best Mauvesin Barton we've tasted, the 2022 has a lovely frangrant, juicy character, with expressive, ripe, black fruit, floral notes and spice. It's open and delicious now, but there's structure and complexity here to age.

Tasted April 2023. 83% Merlot, 17% Cabernet Franc. 14.5% abv. This tiny 2.4ha Pomerol property is run by Guillaume Thienpont, of Le Pin and Vieux Chateau Certan. It's a delight to taste Guillot Clauzel every year but none more so than in 2022, where the wine is full of focused, black berry fruit, mingling with notes of silex, gravel, brine and savoury, woody herbs. Still firmly under the radar, this is an absolute delight in 2022.

Tasted April 2023. 63% Merlot, 37% Cabernet Sauvignon. This is the first year La Garde was made in their new cellar, allowing an extra level of precision. The result is they've been more selective and made less Grand Vin this year. And the results are great, a brilliant expression from an estate that is still something of an insider's tip. The 2022 is fragrant on the nose nose with floral-tinged blackberry and plum. There are lots of stony tannins and mineral freshness, framing a core of ripe dark fruit.