This estate has made leaps and bounds in terms of quality over the past decade, and my money is on the 2018 Château Pédesclaux being the best to date. The 2018 is made from 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot, which will spend 16 months in 60% new French oak prior to bottling. Showing notable freshness and elegance as well as medium to full body, seamless tannins, and perfumed notes of blue fruits, spice, violets, and wet stone-like minerality, it offers the purity, precision, and elegance that the estate now delivers as well as the sweet, sunny fruit of the vintage. It will be accessible with just short-term cellaring yet keep for 25+ years or more.

Pédesclaux was purchased in late 2009 by real estate mogul, Jacky Lorenzetti. In addition to the purchase of Pédesclaux and its 26 hectares of vineyards, Lorenzetti was also able to acquire an additional 12 hectares of vineyards planted at 10,000 vines per hectare that sit atop the Milon plateau (their rows are interspersed with those of Mouton and Lafite). The total vineyard acreage in 2018 was 49.7 hectares with an average vine age of 35 years. The soils are typically gravelly atop a clay subsoil. It will spend an estimated 16 months on the lees in barrels, 60% new and 40% second year. The blend is 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot, and it has 13.96% alcohol. Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2018 Pedesclaux comes charging out of the gate with rambunctious baked plums, warm cassis and Morello cherries scents plus hints of spice cake, menthol and fragrant earth. Medium to full-bodied, the palate delivers mouth-coating black fruits and spicy accents, with a soft, fine-grained frame, finishing long. (LPB)

These guys have really started to make an impact on Pauillac's landscape over the past few vintages and do so again here. It’s not quite up to the brilliant delivery of 2016, but this is firm, vibrant, bright and full of promise with tannins that layer up slowly and stealthily then present you with a cheque. There is clear austerity on the attack but then it opens up to show purity and precision of the fruit, with a sweetness to the berries making it seem likely that seven or eight years will be plenty before this is limbered and ready to go. Drinking Window 2025-2038 (JA)