2024 Château Pradeaux Bandol Rosé

Staff Reviews

KM

Keith Mabry

Keith Mabry

K&L Buyer

Review Date: 05/2025

Sure Tempier is always the benchmark for rose in the Bandol region but for me Pradeaux sits right alongside it. This is a more powerful rose with its deeper color. No fear of flavor in your wine will hold you back. Immediately inviting, this is brimming with wild raspberry, white peach and redcurrant flavors. Silky texture on the palate and a wonderfully long finish invite you back to the glass for more. Great now and will continue to develop as the season goes. Always worth buying multiples to watch it evolve.

AH

Aaron Hughes

Aaron Hughes

Review Date: 05/2025

Super rich and alluring nose with plum flesh, ripe cherry, raspberry and rose compote, and some grapefruit zest all mingling together in this cornucopia of delicious fruity goodness. The mouthfeel is silky right up until the acid kicks in and starts to wash the rest away. There's juicy cherries, raspberries, a little handful of something floral, and then in the very far background this touch of blood orange comes pushing in through the rest. There's a depth and structure here that a lot of roses reach for but don't quite manage to achieve. This would be one of my first choices if someone was cooking something special for me and asked me to pick up a bottle of rose to pair with it.

SB

Scott Beckerley

Scott Beckerley

Review Date: 05/2025

This is some serious Rose! Serious in that it is complex and a real food wine. A nose of blood orange and grapefruit peel with dried cherries. In the mouth, it is quite fleshy with generous mouthfeel and round flavors of red and white currants, strawberry, juicy orange and the ever so slightest bit of chalk n the finish. There's enough going on here to also make it cellar worthy for a few years.

Notes

There is the appellation of Bandol with its plethora of producers, some good, some mediocre; and then there is Château Pradeaux, the unique, inimitable, standard bearer for this ancient wine-growing district. Pradeaux is situated right on the outskirts of the town of St. Cyr Sur Mer, which lies directly on the Mediterranean between Toulon and Marseilles. The estate is owned by the Portalis family, which has owned this property since before the French Revolution. The domaine is currently under the direction of Cyrille Portalis, who continues to maintain the great traditions of this estate. Although the majority of the vineyards are planted to Mourvèdre, the Château Pradeaux Bandol Rosé is composed of Cinsault and Grenache as well as Mourvèdre. After a short maceration on the skins, in order to extract a light color, the juice is fermented at low temperatures to retain freshness, fruit and bouquet. After being aged in stainless steel, the wine is normally bottled in the spring of the year following harvest. It is one of the richest of the rosés of France; dry but full-bodied with a floral bouquet. It is a very limited production wine, as most of the production at Château Pradeaux is used to make the formidable Bandol Rouge.