Chateau Certan de May, Pomerol 2005

This great terroir sandwiched between Vieux Château Certan, Petrus and La Fleur Petrus, on the high plateau of Pomerol, has been owned for many years by the Barrau-Badar family. Beautiful coffee, cedar wood, Christmas fruitcake, black cherry and blackcurrant fruit jump from the glass of this full-bodied, rich, multi-layered, and very impressive Certan de May. I don’t remember it showing this well in barrel and post-bottling, but it is strutting its stuff at age 10, and has a good 20 years of upside left to it. This is a beauty. I especially admire the layered, textural style of the wine. Drink it over the next 20 years.

(-) Deep red. Initially sauvage aromas of plum, leather, game and earth, with higher-pitched blueberry and blackberry emerging with aeration. Sweet, concentrated and densely packed, with a youthfully medicinal character to the dark fruit flavors. Finishes with firm, dusty tannins. Impressively constituted but seems less pure than it was from barrel the spring after the harvest. This will need a good seven or eight years of cellaring. (A second bottle, which I liked far less, was distinctly wilder on the nose and more leathery in the mouth, finishing with drying tannins.)