2022 Chateau de la Bonneliere (Marc Plouzeau) "Les Cornuelles" Chinon

The beautiful base of clay and flint soils that defines the terroir of les Cornuelles is given center stage in this superb 2022 version from Marc Plouzeau. This is going to be a superb bottle of Chinon in the fullness of time, but it has plenty of structure to wait out before it will start to drink with proper generosity. The wine tips the scales at 13.5 percent octane this year and delivers an excellent bouquet of sweet blackberries. A touch of meatiness, cigar wrapper, a complex base of clay and flinty soil tones, a touch of tree bark and a topnote of cigar smoke. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and bottomless at the core, with great purity and precision, superb soil inflection, ripe, buried tannins and a very, very long, nascently complex and highly promising finish. This will be a veritable long distance runner by Chinon’s standards, but it is going to be an outstanding wine once it is ready to drink.