2022 Château Calon-Ségur

The 2022 Calon-Ségur has a powerful, burly bouquet with quite extravagant black, plummy fruit laced with dark chocolate and espresso. Lactones. The palate is sweet on the entry, lavish in style but thankfully showing control. Fine delineation, velvety-smooth, this is remarkably sensual for a Saint-Estèphe, but it needs time to erode that glossy veneer. Tasted blind at the Southwold tasting in London.

The flagship 2022 Château Calon Ségur checks in as 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. It's a massive wine from this château that brings a fabulous nose of darker currants, smoked tobacco, chocolaty oak, graphite, and loamy earth. This full-bodied, deep, unctuous Saint-Estèphe has a round, layered mouthfeel, remarkably pure tannins, and flawless overall balance. It's going to take a decade to shed its baby fat, but this is legit sensational juice! Don’t miss it.

The 2022 Calon Ségur is a wine that I found "uncompromising" when I tasted it at en primeur . Now that the wine is in bottle, it has a strident bouquet that marches from the glass with blackcurrant, bilberry, cedar and pine aromas. It’s very well defined and quite classic in style with finely chiseled tannins. The palate is medium-bodied, fresh and a little more saline than it showed out of barrel. Indeed, it has a tad more elegance now, though it still harks back to some of the classic postwar wines that I tasted in the past—in a good way. Very fresh on the finish, this is a sophisticated Saint-Estèphe born to give years of drinking pleasure, but my word, give it at least a decade before entertaining the idea of opening a bottle.