Tertre Rôteboeuf 2020

Another utterly brilliant wine from this team, the 2020 Château La Conseillante is based on 87% Merlot and 13% Cabernet Franc that saw 70% new French oak. Unquestionably in the same league as the 2019, this beauty offers an incredible bouquet of pure blue fruits, cassis, violets, spring flowers, and truffle. This carries to a full-bodied, seamless, incredibly elegant, layered Pomerol offering perfect tannins, the vibrant, focused, structured style of the vintage, impeccable balance, and a gorgeous finish. As always, this wine is more about purity, finesse, and elegance than power. It offers pleasure even today yet should be given a decade in the cellar, and it will be a 40- to 50-year wine.

The 2020 Le Tertre Roteboeuf will delight admirers of Mitjaville's singular style. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of rich dark berries and plums mingled with black truffles, exotic spices, espresso roast, cedar, vine smoke and toasty new oak, it's full-bodied, layered and velvety, with an ample core of ripe, heady fruit framed by sweet, powdery tannins, concluding with a long, sapid finish.

The 2020 Tertre-Rôteboeuf retains its Côte d'Or leanings on the nose: red cherries, kirsch and vanilla pod, with subtle floral aromas surfacing with aeration. Very pure and perhaps less flamboyant than the previous vintage. The palate is medium-bodied with very polished tannins, exquisite balance, and touches of allspice and thyme infusing the red fruit. Not a single hard edge here; it feels long and persistent toward the finish, completing a very seductive Saint-Émilion that will give pleasure over the next 20 years.

Opaque purple-black in color, the 2020 Le Tertre Roteboeuf needs a little coaxing and patience to lure out captivating notes of wild blueberries, crushed black plums and juicy blackberries, followed by suggestions of red roses, dark chocolate, molten licorice and rich, red soil, with wafts of garrigue and cumin seed. The medium to full-bodied palate delivers decadently intense, exotic spice and mineral-accented black fruit flavors, supported by velvety tannins and seamless freshness, finishing very long and very perfumed. This is without doubt one of the most impactful, singular, nuanced 2020 barrel samples tasted.

This is a powerful, deeply focused and intense. Plenty of spice, cassis pastille, intense muscular tannins, fairly closed and austere right now, but a real sense of lift and juice becomes clear after 10 minutes of opening in the glass. Harvest began on September 21st, the earliest since Mitjavile arrived at the estate. Recently had the beautiful 1998 of Tertre Roteboeuf, and it is easy to see that this vintage also will allow the limestone terroir to become clearer with bottle age.

Drinking Window 2024 - 2036

Deep ruby colour in the glass. The unique, redolent nose here could not be mistaken for any other wine in Bordeaux. Almost Burgundian in its floral accents, there is real depth of plum and even cassis here too. The palate is glossy and intense, full of silky, ripe and dark fruit. The tannins are velveteen, enveloping the core of fruit before it drives through to the finish. This finishes with an explosive, beguiling flourish. An outstanding 2020.

85% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc. 33 hl/ha. Harvested 22–25 September, one of the earliest ever. Cask sample.
Seductive and just a little decadent as always en primeur with a mix of toasted, mocha notes from the oak and red-berry fruit. Dense, rich and ripe on the palate, the ripeness pushed just to the limit. Supple tannins but a structure for ageing, the alcohol offset by a stony freshness. (JL)
Drink 2027 – 2040