La Mondotte Premier Grand Cru Classe B, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 2019

A gorgeous wine, yet one that's going to demand bottle age, the 2019 La Mondotte comes from a tiny vineyard located just beside Pavie Decesse and is always a blend of mostly Merlot with roughly 15-30% Cabernet Franc, brought up in new French oak. Mulled blackcurrants, darker cherries, tobacco leaf, chocolate, lead pencil, and burning ember-like nuances all emerge from this brilliant wine, and it's full-bodied, concentrated, and powerful, with good acidity, building tannins, and a great, great finish. It holds onto the more classic, focused style of the vintage, yet it's a beast of a wine that brings the goods. Hide bottles for a solid 7-8 years or more, count yourself lucky, and it's going to have 30-40 years of longevity.

This has a fragrant nose of blackberries, red tea, cloves, bark, orange zest and dark chocolate. Sandalwood and tile, too. Full-bodied with chewy yet supple tannins and fresh acidity. Seamless and rich. Long and muscular. Try from 2027.

The 2019 La Mondotte is a massive, imposing wine. Huge tannins wrap around a core of blackberry jam, graphite, crushed rocks, menthol, chocolate and licorice. It will be interesting to see if the 2019 softens at all, or if it remains a behemoth. I would like to see a bit more finesse. Power alone is interesting only to a point

A blend of 79% Merlot and 21% Cabernet Franc, the 2019 La Mondotte is deep garnet-purple in color. It leaps with notes of stewed plums, blueberry preserves, and Chinese five spice with hints of sandalwood and star anise. The full-bodied palate delivers mouth-filling, spicy black fruit preserves with a velvety texture and lifted finish.

Aromas of smoky blackberries, black truffles, pipe tobacco, loamy soil and rose petals introduce the 2019 La Mondotte, a medium to full-bodied, deep and velvety wine that's lively and gourmand, with a rich core of fruit that's framed by beautifully polished tannins. This Merlot-dominant cuvée derives from vineyards on the plateau neighboring Troplong-Mondot, but the soils are shallower here, without the same reserves of deep clay.

A powerful punch of inky black and blue fruits to the attack, the charm of this steals up on your slowly, with liquorice and bitter black chocolate coming in from the mid palate onwards as the tannins start to relax. There are floral aromatics here also, if you give them time. An extremely well made, carefully controlled and well held together wine that sits comfortably at the top of the classified range, confident of earning its place. 70% new oak. A yield of 51hl/ha.

The 2019 La Mondotte is very subtle on the nose with red berries, briary and sous-bois scents, well-defined and quite transparent in style. The palate is fresh and somewhat peppery on the entry, with noticeable acidity for the vintage. Linear and strict, old school in many ways with a structured, foursquare finish. This obviously needs time in bottle. Tasted blind at the Southwold annual tasting.