Chateau L'Eglise Clinet 2019
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Suckling
James - Decanter
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Parker
Robert -
Dunnuck
Jeb
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Blend: 90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc
The Barrel Sample for this wine is above 14% ABV.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is amazingly perfumed with amazing aromas of fresh violets and pink roses. Blackberries and dark fruit. Black truffle and stone. It’s full-bodied with fantastic structure and tannins. Yet, it’s weightless and so beautiful. The length is ethereal and goes on for minutes. You taste it and it’s so wonderful that you want to drink it. One for the cellar.
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Decanter
If great wine is about emotion, as we so often say it is, then this is a wine to savour. The last vintage under Denis Durantou, who passed away in May 2020, it will quite rightly be celebrated. But it also stands very much on its own, as a great Pomerol in a vintage where the plateau wines of this appellation have really stood out. A teasing mix of power and a feather-light touch, that trick that Durantou managed to pull off time and time again, one of a handful of winemakers to really get that right. A serious wine, more so than many in Pomerol this year, with tannins that pull you back and slow things down (a character that you see in Petite Eglise this year also), emphasising the slate and crushed stone character to the texture. Liquorice and cassis, blackberry, and a cooler blueberry note, wrapped up in dark black chocolate. This deserves its high score, one that I have only given to handful in this vintage. Is it also given in tribute to Durantou? Honestly, I don't know, and if so he deserves it.
Barrel Sample: 99 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Unquestionably one of the wines of the vintage on the right bank, the late Denis Durantou's swan-song 2019 L'Eglise Clinet is showing very well indeed in bottle. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of dark berry fruit mingled with notions of raw cocoa, violets, black truffle, orange rind, burning embers and loamy soil, it's full-bodied, layered and concentrated, its velvety attack segueing into a deep, multidimensional core that's framed by ripe, powdery tannins and lively balancing acids. Seamless but youthfully structured, this is a prodigious young Pomerol that will richly reward bottle age. Best after 2029. Rating: 98+
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Jeb Dunnuck
The flagship 2019 Château L'Eglise Clinet is brilliant, unquestionably ranking with the top wines in the appellation. Giving up loads of ripe darker cherries, currants, tobacco, cedarwood, and spring flowers, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a plush, layered, opulent mouthfeel, impressive tannins, and a great finish. I love its mid-palate, and it's one of the bigger, richer, sexier wines in the vintage. I'd be thrilled with bottles in the cellar. It offers pleasure even today yet should hit maturity in 7-8 years and have a drinking window stretching over the following two to three decades. Best after 2022. Rating: 97+
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Wine
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.
A source of exceptionally sensual and glamorous red wines, Pomerol is actually a rather small appellation in an unassuming countryside. It sits on a plateau immediately northeast of the city of Libourne on the right bank of the Dordogne River. Pomerol and St-Émilion are the stars of what is referred to as Right Bank Bordeaux: Merlot-dominant red blends completed by various amounts of Cabernet Franc or Cabernet Sauvignon. While Pomerol has no official classification system, its best wines are some of the world’s most sought after.
Historically Pomerol attached itself to the larger and more picturesque neighboring region of St-Émilion until the late 1800s when discerning French consumers began to recognize the quality and distinction of Pomerol on its own. Its popularity spread to northern Europe in the early 1900s.
After some notable vintages of the 1940s, the Pomerol producer, Petrus, began to achieve great international attention and brought widespread recognition to the appellation. Its subsequent distribution by the successful Libourne merchant, Jean-Pierre Mouiex, magnified Pomerol's fame after the Second World War.
Perfect for Merlot, the soils of Pomerol—clay on top of well-drained subsoil—help to create wines capable of displaying an unprecedented concentration of color and flavor.
The best Pomerol wines will be intensely hued, with qualities of fresh wild berries, dried fig or concentrated black plum preserves. Aromas may be of forest floor, sifted cocoa powder, anise, exotic spice or toasted sugar and will have a silky, smooth but intense texture.