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  • Country ranking ?

    164
  • Producer ranking ?

    5
  • Decanting time

    3h
  • When to drink

    from 2028
  • 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 Thienp...

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Wine Information

The 2020 growing season was marked by the striking contrast between an incredibly rainy winter and a durably dry and often hot summer. A homogeneous and rather thin flowering began in mid-May and led to an early harvest that produced a low crop yield.

The old vines, their vigor favourably slowed by this drought, produced wonderfully deep colored, concentrated and balanced wines. Merlot is intensely aromatic, dense, full and with breed. It r...

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Vintage 2020

In Bordeaux, the heat resulted in early flowering. Also, this led to an early harvest after a very hot summer. As a starting point, there is great maturity in the grapes, and one can expect a more opulent vintage than in the last few years.

The summer this year has been the warmest since 1959, yet the rain has fallen at the right times during the growing season. The harvest took place two weeks before the norm and will yield grapes with hig...

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Latest Pro-tasting notes

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Tasting note

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Written Notes

 An extraordinary effort, the wine is almost opaque in color. The haunting perfume offers a bouquet of flowers, black, red and blue fruits, chocolate, spice, espresso and hints of truffles on the nose. Incredibly concentrated, but equally light on its feet, the wine is effortless to taste. With polished, velvet textures and fruits that express purity coupled with spice, chocolate, wet earth and sensuality, the finish crosses the 60 second mark and keeps on going! This is a youthful look at one of the future legendary vintages for Vieux Chateau Certan. If this is your thing, and if you have the extra income, buy it now as prices will only rise from here. Drink from 2027-2065.

  • 100p

The Vieux Chateau Certan 2020 is a radiant wine and displays a deep purple red hue of rare depth and beautiful aromas of ripe fruit. Its remarkable balance between freshness and concentration enable all the qualities of a great long-ageing wine to shine through.

2020 Vieux Chateau Certan 99p
Tasted in November 2021. Barrel sample. 85% Merlot + 15% C. Franc. More potent than 2019 and bigger concentration, but otherwise same astonishing qualities of 2019. Decadently awesome stuff.

  • 99p

Always one of my favorite wines in just about every vintage, the 2020 Vieux Château Certan is another magical wine in the making, revealing a dense purple hue as well as stunning notes of cassis, bright cherries, chocolate, and flowers. It hits the palate with full-bodied richness, perfect tannins, a dense, layered mid-palate, and one blockbuster of a finish. This is unquestionably one of the biggest, richest, sexiest wines in the vintage, and my money is on it flirting with perfection and delivering 30-40 years of prime drinking. The blend is 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc, harvested all in September, and hitting 14.5% natural alcohol with a pH of 3.77.

  • 99p
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Information

Origin

Pomerol, Bordeaux
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