Vieux Château Certan, Pomerol, 2024
Vieux Chateau Certan 2024 offers a gorgeous Cabernet Franc inspired perfume of aromatic, high-toned red berries and floral accents. Revealing sweet berries alongside hints of spice, fragrant, leafy cassis, damsons, crème de mûre, Chambord, bergamot, cigar wrapper, vanilla, peonies, and lilac. The palate is vibrant yet creamy with an almost seamless quality; a sensual core of loganberries and stones mingle with notes of tobacco and pencil shavings. Displaying superb detail and a lovely salinity, underpinned by a juicy well of fruit inflected with minerals, graphite, and flowers. Waves of blackcurrants, cherry, and plum are enveloped by powdery, ethereal tannins. This is a quintessentially handsome VCC full of vivid, aromatic fruit, culminating with complex aromas of graphite, violets, forest floor, in addition to hints of salts and oyster shells. Superb!
critic reviews
Deep garnet-purple colored. Swans out of the glass with gregarious notes of Morello cherries, juicy blackberries, and fresh raspberries, plus hints of lilac, pencil lead, and mossy tree bark. The medium-bodied palate delivers a sturdy structure of ripe, rounded tannins with seamless freshness and bags of red and black berry flavors, finishing with great length and plenty of minerally sparks.
The 2024 Vieux Château Certan contains a higher proportion of Cabernet this year (23% Sauvignon and Franc combined) that was picked at 30 hl/ha between September 20 to October 2. That Cabernet is articulated on the nose: graphite and light tobacco scents percolating through the mainly black fruit. This has plenty of freshness and more fruit than some other Pomerol cuvées. The palate is medium-bodied, but there is much more weight and density on the back palate than nearly all of its peers. Distinctly peppery and quite spicy in style, this is one of the few to transcend the strict limitations of the growing season. In some ways, it is an uncompromising VCC that does not have the finesse of the greatest vintages I have tasted over the years, yet there is flavour and substance packed inside this nascent wine. Deeply impressive. This is one of the very few '24s that will oblige bottle age.
Violet ruby with a vibrant rim, reflects the savoury vivid quality of the vintage in the wines that deliver. Clear chamomile tea, fragrant white blossom, redcurrant, blueberry, a touch of austerity and reserve compared to the past few vintages, but with purity and finesse, mouthwatering finish, 30hl/h yield, 3.7ph, harvest 20 September to 2 October. 3.70 pH, and a high Cabernet character in the final blend (despite one block less of Cabernet Franc after replanting), 66% new oak. An enjoyable wine from Alexandre Thienpont.
A blend of 71% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 9% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2024 Vieux Chateau Certan opens in the glass with brooding aromas of dark berries, cedar, cigar wrapper, crushed mint and loamy soil. Medium to full-bodied, with good density for the vintage and sweet structuring tannins, it concludes with a sapid, slightly earthy finish. Yields after annual sorting came in at 30 hectoliters per hectare, and the wine is being matured in two-thirds new barriques.