Description
“Esprit de Valandraud” Saint-Émilion Grand Cru 2019. New to TOB.
65% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Malbec.
This is the junior sibling of Saint-Émilion’s legendary Château Valandraud (typically around $400 per bottle at retail prices) and the creation of winemaking rebel Jean-Luc Thunevin, a man who single-handedly re-wrote the book on winemaking in Bordeaux in the 1990s, coming from nowhere to confront the establishment with his new style of “garagiste” red wine, which ultimately became the modern definition of classic, setting the mark that every new generation now aspires to beat.
The 2019 “Esprit de Valandraud” is has a kind of luminous purity, a high-beam aromatic stream of cassis and red currant fruit that radiates a sense of velveteen plushness in its fruit expression, a condensed synthesis of grape and oak that smells just how you hope it is going to taste – and it doesn’t disappoint! The palate holds the Holy Grail of Bordeaux’s Right Bank gems, balanced on the fine edge between ultra-ripe fruit and savoury structure making it both flattering and lush on the palate yet offering a tailored kind of silkiness, strong and long. For a five-year-old this is well into its stride and that is perhaps the most obvious difference from the other wines in the Valandraud stable that take a decade just for the fruit and oak to marry. Conversely, this wine is purring like an old-timer, a vintage car polished to a dazzling brightness and absolutely ready to hit the road.
Drink now to 2035+
14.0% ABV
