Château Pavie Macquin, Grand Cru Classé, St Emilion, 2010
Another Thienpont/Derenoncourt project, Pavie Macquin is always impressive, seductive and bold. Produced from 85% Merlot, 11% Cabernet Franc and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon from a plot next to Troplong Mondot and above Pavie. The bouquet is really exuberant - packed with bright blackberry jam notes. On the palate, there is a mass of liqueur fruit, notes of crème brûlée and masses of svelte, velvety black fruit. The tannins are really elegant and polished and one if left with a long, pure fruit finish.
critic reviews
Love the nuances straight off the bat with this wine, it's a nose that you want to take your time with, slowing everything down. Blackberry and cassis fruits, tannnins brooding but velvety, holds its core strength with confidence. This is 12 years old but just revving up out of the starting block. Delicious, reserved but luscious black chocolate and liqourice bud, nothing too sweet, this is balanced and careful in its slate-filled pummice stone minerality. Has a deft lightness of touch that conceals its power. 80% new oak. Part of the warm vintages series within this vertical.
The 2010 Pavie Macquin has a rather lovely menthol/star anis scented bouquet, ripe and extrovert but demonstrating more composure than the Troplong-Mondot alongside. The palate is medium-bodied with a sweet core of black plummy fruit, slightly lower acidity than expected but it remains well balanced with a caressing soy and black pepper tinged finish that fans out nicely. Excellent, if more exotic than I would have liked in the context of the growing season. Tasted at the BI Wines & Spirits 10-Year On tasting.
This is always an extremely masculine, dense, burly wine, and the 2010, which tips the scales at 14.5% alcohol (just slightly under that of the 2009), has a final blend of 80% Merlot and the rest virtually all Cabernet Franc, with just 1% Cabernet Sauvignon. Loads of crushed rock and chalkiness, along with licorice, black truffle, smoked game and black fruits dominate the aromatics and flavor. Backward, formidably endowed, full-bodied and almost atypically massive and huge, with gargantuan extraction, this is a wine for patient connoisseurs to forget about for close to a decade. Anticipated maturity: 2022-2040+.