Chateau Cos d'Estournel (scuffed label) 2003
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
—Robert Parker
In the old Gascon language, the word ‘Cos' means ‘The Hill of Pebbles'. Appropriately named, Château Cos d'Estournel is situated on the banks of the Gironde River between Pauillac and St. Estèphe, where the property is clearly defined by the hill of Cos, reaching to a height of almost 65 feet. It is today owned by Michel Reybier, and continues to be managed by a member of the Prats family under the direction of Jean-Guillaume Prats.
70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
An intense and exotic nose with mulberries and blueberries, that give way to spices. This is wild, full-bodied and rich with a plummy/porty palate with exuberant tannins. A unique power and richness, put leave this for eight years at least.
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Wine Enthusiast
With its aromas of new wood, spice and black fruits, this promises from the start to be a powerful, polished wine. It is dense, very ripe (from the high percentage of Merlot in the blend), but still packed with tannins. It’s a massive wine, bringing together the heat of 2003 with the big tannins of Saint-Estèphe. Imported by Diageo Chateau & Estates.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Harvest finished this year on September 25. The 2003 Cos d'Estournel is a blend of 68% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot and 2% Cabernet Franc. It has a deep garnet-brick color and quite an herbal nose with notions of dried Mediterranean herbs and roasted meats over a core of crème de cassis, stewed plums and unsmoked cigars plus a touch of new leather. Full, rich, concentrated and decadent in the mouth, the palate, though medium-bodied, packs a wallop of fruit with plenty of earthy/savory accents and an herbal lift to the finish.
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Wine Spectator
Shows the heady ripeness of the vintage, with plum eau-de-vie, plum skin and blackberry confiture notes rolling along, lined with an ample roasted cedar edge that emerges fully through the finish. Not top-heavy, showing some aromatic lift, but this does have 03's roasted profile, which can come off as a touch heavy in the end.—Non-blind Cos-d'Estournel vertical (December 2015).
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One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.