Château Giscours, 3eme Cru Classé, Margaux, 2023
After a very successful 2022 it's back to reality at Giscours. This feels stringy and meagre with dry, granular tannins. Margaux is often the most challenging appellation to taste when young. This needs to put on some flesh and resolve its angular tannins to warrant a recommendation.
critic reviews
The 2023 Giscours demands coaxing on the nose. Tightly wound, blackberry, blueberry, violet and cedar develop in the glass, though it remains backward, suggesting cellaring is necessary. The palate is medium-bodied with svelte tannins and a silver thread of acidity. The graphite element is a little more pronounced compared to its showing from barrel, nicely structured with a lively and quite spicy finish. After four to five years it should be ready to go but it should have the legs to offer 20-plus years' enjoyment. Tasted twice and oddly better at a tasting outside the château!
Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2023 Giscours flies out of the glass with vibrant notes of blackcurrant jelly, kirsch, and black raspberries giving way to hints of lilacs, pencil lead, and mossy tree bark. The medium-bodied palate is super soft and silky, with a well-knit line of soft acidity framing the bright, vibrant, and elegantly styled red and black fruit layers, finishing long and perfumed. This is a very alluring Giscours! The blend is 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, and 6% Cabernet Franc, yield 34 hl/ha, aging in oak barrels, 50% new.
Inky, expertly constructed, fleshy blackberry, pomegranate and cassis fruits, black pepper, sage, rosemary and smoked cumin spice, with lift, nuance and momentum through the palate, clearly an excellent vintage at Giscours, although relatively low 31hl/ha yields.
The 2023 Giscours is one of the real successes of the vintage, unwinding in the glass with aromas of dark berries, cherries and red fruits mingled with hints of undergrowth, violets and licorice. Medium to full-bodied, deep and layered, it's seamless and concentrated, with a fleshy core of fruit framed by ripe, powdery tannins and succulent acids, concluding with a long, broad finish. It's a blend of 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot and 6% Cabernet Franc.