2025 Clos Fourtet

Auslieferung bis Herbst 2028!
Delivery until Fall 2028!

(Saint-Émilion; 84% Merlot; 10% Cabernet Franc; 6% Cabernet Sauvignon; a final yield of 28 hl/ha; 14% alcohol; tasted at the property). Nutty at first aromatically, which I wasn't quite expecting. Saline in its minerality too. And, of course, intensely dark berry fruited. The signature florality is there but it needs a little coaxing from the glass. This is luminous, indeed crystalline, incredibly pure and seems to be composed of glistening sheets of layered silk. There's a little touch of graphite, but no cedar as yet. In a way it's simpler and more beautiful than that - just pure fruit grown on limestone! Clos Fourtet is a wine of vivid freshness, with a fruit profile more pure than perhaps any other in this vintage. It's intimate, refined, elegant, and extremely limpid, with the most delicate touch of those beautifully powdery signature limestone tannins. Exquisite, perfectly pixilated in its detail and utterly brilliant. Closerie de Fourtet (85% Merlot; 15% Cabernet Franc; a final yield of 28 hl/ha; 14% alcohol). From the clay parcels just outside the château and the young vines. Beautifiully crunchy in its vibrant purple fruit purity. Accessible, lithe and brilliantly pure. Racy. Crunchy. Fabulous (91-93).
96-98/100 Colin Hay

So this is a hot vintage? The first sip tells another story: it feels as though a piece of polished, lustrous jade has been placed gently in the mouth, soft in color and touched by a natural sweet sensation so tender that the mind falls quiet at once. In its dark, profound depth, the wine appears tranquil, yet beneath that stillness, it gathers delicate fruits and a force quietly waiting for release. Dark plum, bayberry, black goji berry, and a faint breath of iris slowly converge as the wine advances. It begins almost motionless, with barely a ripple; then, little by little, its power rises, like the sea reversing into a river mouth, suddenly throwing up a saline, savory wave across the palate. This is a style of wine I deeply admire: gentle as water, seemingly effortless, yet already unstoppable. As Laozi once wrote, “Nothing under heaven is more soft and weak than water, yet nothing is better for attacking the hard and strong.”
97-99/100 Alexandre Ma

Fragrant, intense and vivid opening, rose bud, violet flowers, intense and chalky. These are powerful tannins, chalk, pumice stone, a slow and gentle build through the palate, every time you think it is done it just gives a little bit more. Concentrated, elegant, savoury and just so tasty. 3.4pH. Harvest September 8 to 22. 40% new oak.
97/100 Jane Anson