Chateau La Fleur-Petrus, Pomerol 2022

Awesome aromatics of black cherries, saddle leather, savory flowers, and incense emerge from the 2022 Château La Fleur-Petrus, another riveting wine in the vintage that brings incredible intensity while at the same time staying elegant, seamless, and flawlessly balanced. A blend of 97% Merlot and 3% Petit Verdot, this full-bodied, seamless Pomerol has fine yet building tannins, beautiful mid-palate depth, and a great finish. It picks up more and more classic La Fleur Petrus floral and spicy nuances with time in the glass, and it will have three decades of prime drinking ahead of it. It will be fun to compare this with the 2020 over the coming decades.

A clear stand out in 2022 with so much promise. Bright and energetic, quite lean in terms of tannic structure but straight and not austere or raw, maintains a clear direction with detail and definition all the way through. Nothing seems too much, great energy and focus with cool black and blue fruits, a salty minerality and toasted liquorice. Delicate almost, such refinement given the core of power and concentration but so delicately presented you'd almost think it wasnt there. This takes some time to reveal its layers in the glass, opening up slowly with the ripe fruit, and sense of verticality coming in after a few minutes. I love the sculpting but it's how this wine opens and grows that is so compelling. It's so enormously powerful, but so well caged right now, pure, clean, crisp, soft, chalky, intense and cool. A fabulous wine.

This is beautiful, totally captures the hedonism of Pomerol, luscious, deep and rather glorious in character. Bitter tinged fennel shot through with cocoa bean and cocoa dusting, pomegranate, orange peel, mandarin, just the most gorgeous balance of opulent and bitter. Great stuff, loaded with black fruits. 18.7ha, harvest September 1 to 19, deep gravel and clay on iron-rich subsoil.

A very opulent and extravagant red with dark plums, spices and lifted cedar. The palate is full-bodied yet very tight with endless tannins that are integrated and polished, bringing form and verve to this young wine. 96.5% merlot, 3% cabernet franc and 0.5% petit verdot. Try after 2030.

The 2022 La Fleur-Pétrus has an opulent, ripe bouquet of blackberry, liquorice and brown spices, with a little heady alcohol here. The palate is medium-bodied with sappy black fruit and rounded tannins, quite plush, and there is a veneer of dark chocolate towards the finish. Quite modern in style, but it pulls it off with flair. Tasted blind at the Southwold tasting in London.

In bottle, the 2022 La Fleur-Pétrus is broad and unctuous, offering up aromas of Agen prunes, dark berries and cherries mingled with notions of sweet spices, licorice and raisin fruitcake. Full-bodied, rich and chocolaty, it's ripe and heady, with an ample core of fruit and a sweet, lingering finish. The warmth and sunshine of the vintage is on full display.