Château Cos d'Estournel, 2eme Cru Classé, St Estèphe, 2024
The Cos d'Estournel 2024 reveals a rather beguiling and gently expressive bouquet. Subtle notes of griotte cherry mingle with bright redcurrant and a touch of sour plum, lifted by hints of eucalyptus and an intriguing Asian spice. While initially quite reserved, the wine displays a fine architectural structure and a charming core of bright, engaging fruit. Underpinning this is a lively acidity that carries through to a long and detailed finish. Produced from 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 38% Merlot, 1.5% Cabernet Franc and 0.5% Petit Verdot, picked between the 23rd of September to the 7th of October, this has been made sympathetically, respecting the constraints of the vintage and the result is rather charming. It will be aged in 50% new oak barrels.
critic reviews
Deep garnet-purple in color. Requires a little swirling to unlock notes of fresh blackcurrants and kirsch, leading to suggestions of bay leaves, wet slate, and tapenade with a touch of violets. The light-bodied palate is refreshing and elegant with fine-grained tannins and a whispery finish.
The 2024 Cos d'Estournel was picked from September 23 to October 7 and matured in 50% new oak. This has an atypically powerful bouquet, revealing black fruit laced with graphite and gravelly scents. The palate has a Pauillac-like entry that's fresh but certainly intense. There's plenty of grip in this Cos d'Estournel that's a little sweeter and reassuringly persistent on the finish compared to its peers. It does not deliver the <em>mineralité</em> of a top-flight Cos d'Estournel, though there's certainly much more fruit intensity than you would expect given the growing season. I observed more classicism during my second record, which suggests that the depth of fruit may become more prominent during barrel maturation. Readers should note it displayed more depth and precision on my second visit on the final day in Bordeaux.
Highly textural, with layers and depth, this shows savoury and slim black fruits, real finesse, beautifully precise and grippy texture, cocoa bean, espresso, lovely quality. This feels genuinely old school in the best sense of the word. Harvest 23 September to 7 October. 3.52 pH. 20% new oak, 46% 1st wine.
The 2024 Cos d'Estournel is shaping up beautifully. Offering up aromas of sweet cassis, plums, pencil shavings and iris, it's medium to full-bodied, supple and suave, reflecting this estate's pivot to a more harmonious, less aggressively extracted style. With a layered, seamless core of fruit framed by plenty of sweet, powdery tannin, it's a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 38% Merlot, 1.5% Cabernet Franc and 0.5% Petit Verdot that checks in at 12.7% alcohol. Cos is an early-ripening terroir, and that clearly played to the relative strengths of the vintage. Harvest here began with the estate's old-vine Merlot on gravel on September 23, concluding with the last Cabernet Sauvignon on October 7.