Tasting Notes
Jeb Dunnuck 100
Moving to the Grand Vin, the 2020 Vieux Château Certan is another legendary wine from this vintage, ranking with the best Bordeaux ever produced. Based on 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc that spent 18 months in 65% new French oak, it has a deep, powerful, full-bodied style as well as incredible purity and precision in its darker cassis, graphite, gravelly earth, and tobacco-driven aromatics. With perfectly-integrated oak, again, incredible purity, and perfect, ultra-fine tannins, it deserves 8-10 years of bottle age and will be a 40- to 50-year wine.
Anticipated maturity: 2030-2070
Vinous 97
A powerful, vertical wine, the 2020 Vieux Château Certan is endowed with tremendous intensity right out of the gate. Everything about the 2020 is dialed up. The fruit is huge, as are the tannins. Black cherry, licorice, new leather, spice and bittersweet chocolate saturate the palate in a wine that conveys opulence from start to finish. Yields were just 30 hectoliters per hectare, well below the norm of 40-42. The blend is 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc, in other words a high percentage of Franc. There is no Cabernet Sauvignon in the final blend this year, the result of dehydration on the vine. The 2020 is fabulous. I can’t wait to taste it from bottle.
Anticipated maturity: 2035-2060
Robert Parker 99
The 2020 Vieux Chateau Certan is a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc, picked on the 14th to the 24th of September for the Merlot, then on the 28th and 29th of September for the Cabernet Franc. The pH is 3.77 and the alcohol is 14.5%. Deep purple-black colored, it needs considerable coaxing, swirling and a lot of patience before it finally lets rip an intoxicating perfume of ripe, juicy black plums, Morello cherries, candied violets, black truffles and crushed rocks, giving way to hints of black tea, molten licorice and Sichuan pepper, plus a waft of dusty red soil. The medium to full-bodied palate delivers achingly ripe, silt-like tannins and shimmering freshness that melds with the black fruits and earthy layers with jaw-dropping seamlessness, finishing with layer upon layer of mineral and savory suggestions and, finally, a gorgeous floral whisper. There are going to be two ways to approach this: 1) Just let the remarkably sensual, inexplicable beauty of it wash over you or 2) Try to unravel all those intricate layers and have it blow you mind. Either way, this is simply an incredible achievement—bravo Alexandre and Guillaume Thienpont!
Anticipated maturity: 2029-2069
JancisRobinson.com 18++
85% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc. Cask sample. Deep, intense colour. Lovely open expression of fruit on the nose with floral notes and plenty of lift and relief. Palate ripe but vinous and sappy, the tannins finely honed offering a velvety texture. Contained power and concentration behind. Slight glow but remains digeste. Another top year. (JL)
Anticipated maturity: 2030-2055
