chateau ausone 1er grand cru classe st emilion

Château Ausone

Château Ausone, 1er Grand Cru Classé, St Emilion, 2020

Name: Château Ausone, 1er Grand Cru Classé, St Emilion
Brand: Château Ausone
Price: 2746.33 GBP

99/100

Inside Bordeaux

100/100

The Wine Independent

98/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

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in bond

Broking

2020
6x75cl
DP
£2,746.33
2020
3x1.5L
DP
£2,746.33

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

This is powerful and blows away much of the competition with its depth and layers. This needs you to pull up a chair, take a beat, and let the flavours unroll. There is so much density to the blueberry, bilberry and smoked raspberry fruits that they start out knitted down, then as the oxygen opens them up the body of the wine widens and becomes fleshier and creamier, adding chocolate and mocha notes. The limestone scrape is there in spades through the finish, and this is a cleverly constructed wine. As ever Ausone is just a masterclass in how to take apart and then put back together a terroir. Great stuff. First year of official conversion to organic farming. 100% new oak, some in 30hl oak casks. Could go up after tasting in bottle, a potential 100 points.

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GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of upmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

98/100

Neal Martin,

Vinous

The 2020 Ausone has a very crisp and precise bouquet, with a mixture of red and black fruit, crushed stone, black truffle and cedar that gains intensity in the glass. Medium in body, the palate is composed and refined with fine tannins. A taut yet brilliantly defined, pixelated finish goes on and on and on. This is one of the Vauthiers' finest wines in recent years. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.

drinking window 2030 - 2070

date of review 11/2024

100/100

Lisa Perrotti-Brown,

The Wine Independent

The 2020 Ausone, composed of 50% Merlot and 50% Cabernet Franc, is deep garnet-purple in color. After a shake or two, the nose erupts with the most gorgeous perfume of juicy blueberries, baked black plums, and black raspberries, followed by nuances of pencil shavings, iron ore, rose oil, and black truffles with a waft of cedar. The medium to full-bodied palate is taut with shimmery, energetic black and blue berry layers, framed by super-ripe, super fine-grained tannins and seamless freshness, finishing with epic length and a whole firework display of floral, mineral, and bright, pure fruit notes. This is incredible!

drinking window 2029 - 2069

date of review 03/2023

99/100

Jane Anson,

Inside Bordeaux

A stunning wine, that seduces with a creamy luscious kick of spiced raspberry and blueberry fruit on the first moments, then the more austere touch of limestone, with fingers of orange peel, lemongrass, steel and slate add a stricter character. This is just a masterclass in clever winemaking, in knowing exactly when to step back and let the terroir take over. The depths on offer here are both hidden and yet fully apparent, and as it gathers steam through the palate, gunsmoke and mocha appear, along with the tell-tale oyster shell salinity on the finish. 100% new oak, Pauline Vauthier winemaker with cellar master Philippe Baillarguet. First year of official conversion to organic farming.

drinking window 2030 - 2050

date of review 02/2023

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abv:

13.5%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.