Château Clerc Milon Rothschild, 5ème Cru Classé, Pauillac, 2019
Charming wine with bramble and cherry fruit on the nose; a soft structure on the palate, medium weight, plenty of grippy red fruit and a pleasant chocolatey finish. One of the rare wines in Bordeaux still to add a small amount of Carmenère to the blend.
critic reviews
The 2019 Clerc Milon is composed of 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, and 2% Petit Verdot. Deep garnet-purple in color, it needs a lot of swirling to reveal notes of black cherries and mulberries over a core of cassis, cedar, and crushed rocks plus a waft of truffles. The medium-bodied palate has a sturdy structure, with grainy tannins and lively acidity supporting the cedar-laced black fruits, leading to a minerally finish.
The 2019 Clerc-Milon has a relatively light bouquet, although it does build in the glass, with red berry fruit, mixed herbs and leather. The palate is medium-bodied with a pliant and harmonious opening. Smooth in texture and with fine acidity, this has one of the more sensual and refined finish. Very fine. Tasted blind at the Southwold annual tasting.
Just so much joy to be had here. Precision architecture from the first moment, velvet texture, well balanced, tiptoes through the palate and builds slowly, delivering inky glass-staining colour. Sweet and seductive, with plump damson and black cherry fruits, and waves of anniseed and fennel on the finish. As with the 2009 this it will close up soon, as these tannins have bite, so expect it to keep building and deepening over the next decade. Jean Emmanuel Danjoy's last full vintage, before he headed over to Mouton Rothschild in 2020. Harvest September 19 to October 9.
The 2019 Clerc Milon is a real success. At more than 70%, this blend contains one of the highest proportions of Cabernet Sauvignon in the property's recent history, and the result is a wine of real nobility. Offering up aromas of violets, wild berries, licorice, loamy soil and cigar wrapper, it's full-bodied, layered and multidimensional, with notable depth at the core, lively acids and ripe, powdery tannins that assert themselves on the finish. From clay-limestone soils rather than the sandy gravels that characterize d'Armailhac, this is by some margin the more structured and serious of Mouton-Rothschild's two Pauillac stablemates.