2019 Grand Puy Ducasse

Tasted blind. Purple fruits and then very chewy. Tannin too great for the slightly spindly fruit. (JR)

A beautiful effort that does everything right, the 2019 Château Grand-Puy Ducasse offers a rich, medium to full-bodied, concentrated style that shows the inherent elegance, as well as richness, of the vintage. Darker currants, toasted spice, cedar pencil, and tobacco notes all define the bouquet, and it's quintessentially Pauillac with its aromatics as well as structure. It already offers pleasure, particularly with a decant (I followed this bottle for multiple days), but it will certainly benefit from 5-7 years in the cellar and is going to shine for at least two decades.

The 2019 Grand-Puy-Ducasse exhibits aromas of raspberries, currants and fruit liqueur mingled with subtle hints of loamy soil and pencil shavings. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and demonstrative, with an ample core of fruit, ripe tannins and lively acids and a finish subtly marked by alcoholic warmth, this is more elegant than its muscular, powerful 2018 predecessor; but it's held back by that touch of alcoholic heat. The new ambition that's animating this historically lackluster estate, however, is more than evident, and there are surely great things to come from this address.