Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesComing from the Cazes team, the 2019 Château Ormes De Pez is gorgeous and shines in the vintage. Pure crème de cassis, mulberries, leafy herbs, Asian spices, and lead pencil all emerge on the nose, and this medium to full-bodied 2019 has the vintage’s pure, focused, elegant style while staying ripe, supple, and textured. The balance is spot on, and it's going to hit maturity in roughly 8-10 years and have two decades of prime drinking. Best After 2030
Barrel Sample: 92-93
Barrel Sample: 92
Offers a delightful mix of dark fruit and fresh flavors, with plum and blackberry notes infused with dark tea, singed cedar and licorice root, all carried by sleek acidity through the finish. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Drink now.
The 2019 Ormes de Pez exhibits generous aromas of sweet berry fruit, rose petals and pencil shavings, followed by a medium to full-bodied, lively and seamless palate that's bright and integrated, with an elegantly fleshy core of fruit, fine tannins and a saline finish. Produced by the Cazes family of Château Lynch-Bages, this is invariably one of the most charming, friendly wines of Saint-Estèphe. Best After 2021
Chateau Les Ormes des Pez has very homogenous soil (a clay gravel mixture typical of Saint-Estephe) and many of the vines are quite old. The grapes are hand-picked. After selecting the vats and blending, the wine is aged in oak barrels for 15 months in a magnificent cellar overlooking the courtyard.
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.
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.