The Bordeaux Part II Experience - Pavie

Continuing on from my previous post the second wine of the evening was onto the big boy of Chateau Pavie. Located to the southeast of the town, running down the côtes, most of the 37 hectares of vines are 40 years of age, trained high to improve exposure to the fruit and are situated on clay and limestone soils. The grapes are hand harvested and once pressed spend 24 months in 100% new oak. Throughout this duration the wine undergoes batonnage and finally is bottled without fining or filtration, of which there are about 8000 cases produced per year.

Chateau Pavie – Saint-Emillion Grand Cru – 2001
70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon

Seriously inky dark on the appearance this wine looks broad and bold. A smoky nose lures you in further to reveal ripe plum and dark cheery with a sprinkle of fine tobacco. Intriguing and interesting but worried by the youthful presence of its 100% new oak. The first thing that hits your pallet is a sweetness sensation, but not as in sugar, its ripe dark cherry plum fruit and liquorish vanilla flavor with a long round finish yielding a firm complex tannin structure balanced with enough acidity to show this beauty will age easily decades to come. This wine was decanted for around 4 hours, perhaps could have benefited from more as later in the evening when revisiting the wine the aroma opened up further to reveal clearer dark fruit and powdered dark chocolate on the finish. A fantastic Grand Bordeaux experience drinking well now but will also benefit from further ageing. At an average price today of £126 per bottle this is an expensive bottle of wine to drink without an occasion but a thoroughly pleasant and educational wine experience enough for it to be the occasion! 94/100

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The Bordeaux Part I Experience - Rol Valentin

Sunday evenings can often be spent over at my parents house 15 minutes away from mine for a great Sunday roast complimented with a good bottle of wine. There can be as many as 6 of us when my girlfriend and my sisters boyfriend are around but last Sunday it was just my dad and I as everyone else was out of town for the weekend. Not everyone in our family is SO passionate about wine and im sure my dad and I can bore a little when we get into geeking out on wine stats, facts and tasting notes, especially when I get my pen, pad and camera out! Knowing we had an opportunity to really get into the depths of a wine we planned ahead to have a real wine night outside in the new garden house (the wine den) my parents have been working so hard on. One thing you should know about my father is that he is a huge wine enthusiast interested in and investing in wine since the early 70’s and is the main reason for my passion for all things wine. Both of us have had a trend in drinking a lot of Australian and Rhone wines recently so what with the en premier only a few weeks gone we decided to have a Bordeaux evening and pulled out some big and bigger guns from the past.

Château Rol Valentin 1998
85% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc – 100% new oak for 18 months

Chateau Rol Valetin is located on the north-western part of the St Emilion plateau with 4.6 hectares of planted of vineyards. The vine age is typically 35-40 years yielding only 14,000 bottles.
Poured after a 2 hour decant this wine was dark throwing a little sediment and showing great and prominent legs. Quite an intense aroma before I even got into the wine but burying my nose into the glass showed raspberry and plumb with grated tobacco leaf, really quite interesting and enjoyable. Quite light on the pallet showing ripe fruit, a good balance of acidity and a little astringency with a succulent round finish of ripe plumbs, vanilla and tobacco. This wine was bought en premier in 1999 but today averages for around £73 and was a great opener for our second wine (previewed in the background of the image below) of the evening. 91/100

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