Ausone 2017

The deep garnet-purple colored 2017 Ausone is a blend of 55% Cabernet Franc and 45% Merlot. It sashays out of the glass with gregarious scents of baked red and black plums, wild blueberries and boysenberries plus touches of violets, espresso, licorice and melted chocolate with wafts of iron ore and tilled soil. Medium-bodied, the palate is an exercise in poise, featuring beautifully ripe, silken tannins and bold freshness to support the fragrant multi-layers, finishing very long and very minerally. 2024 - 2057

The 2017 Ausone was bottled in June 2019. It is blessed with one of the most cerebral bouquets that you will find in this vintage. Nuanced scents of violet and wild heather percolate through the blueberry and cassis fruit. Like the aromatics, the palate is almost pixelated in terms of detail. Cashmere tannins, perfectly integrated new oak and layers of pure fruit. The limestone terroir still shines through this Ausone with intense _mineralité _ towards the seductive finish that lingers in the mouth. Alain and Pauline Vauthier have crafted one of the wines of the vintage. 2024 - 2050

Tasted blind. Deep ruby colour. Explosive and ripe aromatics – brambly fruit, kirsch, nutmeg and cinnamon. Quite tropical. A big glob of fruit on the palate, very ripe and forward. This fleshy and seductive wine is very intense and impressive, but perhaps more for a glass than a full bottle. Very glossy to the finish.
Drink 2025 – 2039

Love the perfume and pretty, transparent fruit. Purity. Raspberries. Full-bodied, extremely focused and bright with clarity and beauty. Juicy and savory. Chalk and light chocolate at the finish. Try after 2024, but gorgeous to taste already.

This is totally stunning, demonstrating depth, texture, salinity and flesh. It manages to be both austere and generous at the same time, pushing and pulling. It's a totally different conversation to many others wines this year. There was no frost effect here, although some of their other estates were fully wiped out. Harvested 23-29 September from 7.25ha planted at densities ranging between 6,500-12,600 vines per hectare. 100% new oak.
Drinking Window 2027 - 2043

Darkest purple crimson. Smoky, lightly charry aroma from the oak and an inviting mineral/dusty quality and fresh, pure cassis fruit shines out. Succulent, the oak swallowed by the fruit on the palate. Concentrated and so full of fine, pure dark fruit. The tannins are compact but also somehow sweet, giving a firm but very smooth framework for the fruit. Long and fresh. Very good, and impressive harmony already.
Drink 2027-2040

In 2017 picking took place between September 23rd and 29th with a normal yield of 35 hl/ha - there was no frost damage here high on the best slopes of St Emilion. The assemblage in 2017 is 55% Cabernet Franc, 45% Merlot. A deep, saturated colour here with sweet, dark chocolate and liquorice on this exotic nose of impressively ripe black fruits. This is exuberant and enticing. The palate is chock full of black fruits, offering one of the best, densest mid-palates of the vintage without sacrificing the tannic structure, which remains defiantly polished, ripe and harmonious. The bright acidity of the vintage lends itself to this wine, turning the lightly roasted black fruits to notes of cherry blossom and freshly-picked blackberries on the finish. The oak is noticeable but adds to the complexity rather than fighting the fruit. Smoky incense and baked vanilla lingers in tandem with the fruit on a long finish.

Rich and ripe the nose has depth a mix of sweet fruits the palate starts with fleshy richness the tannins are silky creamy on the mid palate the black fruits rich ripe and sweet. There is balance freshness towards the back fragrant with the rich fruit coming through giving a rich finish. 2027-42

There was no frost damage here. This is the finest nose of the vintage and the seduction and complexity of the fruit, oak and minerality here is staggering. I spent a full five minutes smelling this wine before I tasted it. Nothing is out of place and nothing is hurried. The nose is like a perfect wave of sensory pleasure, tempered and held by the exact conditions of the vintage. The palate is bold and all-enveloping, but it is not heavy or muscular. There is a Burgundian resonance here and there are even griotte notes in among the more traditional Bordeaux descriptors. The texture is mesmerising, as is the calmness and coolness with which this wine hands out its bounteous flavours. Epically long and desperately enticing already, goodness knows what will happen to it when it softens and builds further. It is already close to perfection, but in this unpredictable vintage it is a serious triumph and my wine of the year.