Domaine d'Eugenie, Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2018

Another different register as we head to Pessac-Léognan. And as with Mouton this has an exuberant grilled almond note around the edges with a thick velvety texture. You can really feel the weight and width of this wine through the mid palate and again you feel it just has so much life and pleasure ahead of it. This is all about the texture, it has an extremely marked sense of a rising tide of tannins and fruit, ready to power through the ages.

Drink 2025-2050

This ripples with liquorice and black chocolate and higher acidity than the last two Echezeaux and Grand-Echezeaux wines - it's hard to ignore the width and depth on display here. I love how the different personalities are staked out in these last three wines, despite being located less than 500m from each other. 50% whole cluster. This is 1.36ha from the upper part of the Clos Vougeot hillside, on clay-limestone and clay-silt soils.

Drink 2022-2040

The 2017 Clos de Tart Grand Cru was matured in around 80% new oak, the barrels toasted chauff blonde. Jacques Desvauges mentioned that the wine needed oxygen ingress during maturation that only new oak can give. I tasted the component parts as usual) as well as the blend. This has a very detailed, delineated bouquet offering mainly black fruit mixed with sous-bois, tobacco, clove and bay leaf, the typicité of the appellation showing through nicely. It feels very succinct and yet so fresh. The palate is beautifully balanced on the entry with a killer line of acidity. Pure black cherry fruit is joined by bilberry, hints of black olive and a marine/oyster shell tincture that comes through quite strongly toward the persistent, saline finish, which fans out with confidence. This is a brilliant follow-up to the benchmark 2016 by Jacques Desvauges and his team.

Drink 2024-2050