2017 Château Montrose, 2ème Cru Classé Saint-Estephe

Since Ch. Montrose was bought by the Bouygues brothers in 2006, more than €50m has been invested in up-grading the property, lifting Montrose to new heights. The Cabernet Sauvignons were superb in 2017, and make up 76% of the assemblage, with 20% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot. The winery has been equipped with more than 90 small vats, allowing individual vineyard-plots to be chosen for hand-picking precisely as they ripened, by a 100-strong team. The 2017 wine is impressively deep, purple-ruby, with strikingly elegant, ripe, black-currant aromas of great purity. Palate is richly built, with round, intensely clean fruitiness. It is not the wine’s structure or power which most impresses, but its elegant texture, sustained flavours in mid-palate, and lovely length. This is a classic, great Montrose, and one of the most charming, luscious, long-flavoured wines of the vintage (for drinking 2025-2045+).