2009 Berliquet

Very dense, glowing crimson. Big and ripe. Chock full of ripe, opulent fruit with fully melded tannins and lots of alcohol on the finish. (JR)

Full red-ruby. Lively nose offers cassis, minerals, licorice and a note of cherry-almond. Broad and large-scaled for this Saint-Emilion, with sweet, concentrated cassis, black cherry and soil flavors joined on the back by a smoky quality. The classically dry, long finish features serious building tannins, noteworthy energy and excellent punch. I haven't tasted a stronger young wine from this property in recent memory.

The wine displays oodles of strawberry jam intermixed with kirsch, dusty, loamy soil notes, garrigue, spice box and vanillin. It is full-bodied, opulent, very flamboyant and showy, with a hint of chalky minerality to add complexity and precision. It should drink well for up to 15 or more years. Showing far better than it did from barrel, this wine comes from a beautiful southwest-facing hillside slope near Angelus. With the 2009, Berliquet has turned out one of their best wines in many a year. Yields were only 21.5 hectoliters per hectare, and the wine is a final blend of 73% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc and 2% Cabernet Sauvignon that tipped the scales at 14% natural alcohol under the guidance of Stephane Derenoncourt.