Château Montrose - Saint-Estèphe 2ème Grand Cru Classé 2020 (750ml)
Price: $269.99
| Producer | Château Montrose |
| Country | France |
| Region | Bordeaux |
| Varietal | Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc |
| Vintage | 2020 |
| Sku | 202444 |
| Size | 750ml |
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Wine Advocate: 100 Points
Surpassing the 2019 and rivaling the 2016 as this estate's finest vintage of the last few decades, the 2020 Montrose is a monument in the making. Wafting from the glass with aromas of violets, dark berries, licorice, loamy soil, black truffle and subtle spices, it's full-bodied, deep and layered, with a seamless, elegantly muscular profile, terrific purity and energy, beautifully powdery tannins and a long, resonant finish. It checks in at 13.7% alcohol, the same as the superb 2009, but it is even deeper, more vibrant and more complex than the 2009.
Vinous: 99 Points
The 2020 Montrose is epic. Dark, rich and brooding, the 2020 possesses remarkable intensity, and, yet it is somehow not excessively heavy. Time in the glass brings out the wine's more elegant sophisticated side. All the elements are so well-balanced. Red/purplish fruit, lavender rose petal, gravel and spice are all accented by veins of intense minerality that lend shape and energy. The 2020 is a modern-day classic for Montrose and one of the great wines of the Left Bank.
*****
The 2020 Montrose was bottled in July 2022. The alcohol is 13.4%, a whole degree less than the previous year but with the same concentration (IPT is 80). It has a fabulous bouquet that delivers on all that promise from when I finally tasted the wine around a year earlier from barrel, a cornucopia of blackberry, bilberry, crushed stone, Indian ink and loamy/undergrowth scents. Very mercurial in the glass, it seems to shapeshift with every minute. The palate is medium-bodied with such a precise entry. This is far more detailed than either the 2019 or 2018, a symmetrical Montrose with unerring detail and mineralité, its silky texture belying the power underneath. This is unequivocally a brilliant wine and a benchmark in recent years. Contender for wine of the vintage.
Wine Spectator: 95 Points
Gorgeously rendered for the vintage, with a well-endowed core of loganberry, mulberry and cassis flavors that roll through and are laced with a cast iron hint, while tobacco, warm stone and black tea accents swirl in the background. The long, authoritative finish steadily melds the fruit with the cast iron edge. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
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