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  • Country ranking ?

    1 305
  • Producer ranking ?

    40
  • Decanting time

    2h
  • When to drink

    2020-2035
  • Food Pairing

    Beef

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The Story

Vieux Chateau Certan is one of Pomerol's oldest and most exalted estates, having produced wine since at least the mid 1740s. On the Belleyme Map, published in 1785, the property was listed as "Sertan" and was owned by the Demays, a family of established Bordeaux negociants. A century later, ownership passed to a banker, Charles de Bousquet, who sold it to George Thienpont in 1924.

The family diversified in 1979 when Marcel and Gérard Thienpont founded nearby microcuvée estate Château Le Pin. In 1985, management of Vieux Château Certan came to Alexandre Thienpont.

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Vintage 2001

Bordeaux / The year 2001 is known as the year of the winegrowers. The whole of Bordeaux suffered from a lot of rain and the resulting noble rot. Sauternes has been producing its best wines for decades, and there is good reason to talk about the Sauternes revolution. The best wine of the year is clearly Yquem. Parker's hundred-point Yquem sold for 300 euros en primeur, and today the price is 600 euros per bottle.

For red wines, the year was difficult. Cabernet Sauvignon, thanks to its thicker skin, did better than Merlot. The cold, rainy and cloudy growing period caused the grapes to ripen too slowly. The areas had to work more intensively. The grapes were rather small and produced concentrated wines. Latour can be considered the best buy. Good buys also include Ausone, Pétrus and Le Pin.

Sauternes Vintage Report: Rapid appearance of botrytis on ripe grapes, rich in sugar. Ideal October: brief rainstorms, high temperatures, windy and sunny afternoons. Very sweet but balanced wines with pronounced noble rot and remarkable complexity. A memorable year and very uniform success for all liqueurs.

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Latest Pro-tasting notes

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Written Notes

With its blend of 75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, Vieux Château Certan 2001 is a compact wine, combining roundness and depth. It is a complex, well-balanced vintage, with that perfect combination of great maturity and appealing liveliness.

The winter of 2001 was marked by exceptional mildness and abundant rainfall, resulting in early reawakening of the vines with substantial leaf growth.

The warm weather which arrived as from the beginning of May fostered rapid and homogeneous flowering in all three grape varieties during the last week of the month. The vigour of the vines was still impressive at that stage. Fortunately, the hot, dry weather which settled in as from the second half of July tempered the vigour and triggered a slow, well-balanced ripening of the grapes. A beautifully sunny month of September offered excellent conditions for optimal grape ripeness. The Merlot plots were harvested from September 20th to 27th, the Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon a week later.

"A brilliant effort from Alexandre Thienpont, this blend of 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Franc is a deep purple-colored, fleshy, layered effort offering a sweet nose of creosote, incense, Christmas spices, plenty of red and black fruits, and hints of licorice as well as new oak. Rich, medium to full-bodied, with tremendous purity in addition to nobility, give it two more years of cellaring and drink it over the next following 15-18 years." RP
  • 91p
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Information

Origin

Pomerol, Bordeaux
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