2015 Château Pavie-Macquin

The 2015 Pavie-Macquin has a warm and inviting bouquet featuring plush red berry fruit, fireside hearth and light espresso scents. This is mature and forward, with perhaps just a soupçon of VA. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins. This is fleshy but not deep and misses some grip. There is a pleasing harmony to this Saint-Émilion but this lacks substance. It has a pleasant sour cherry twist on the finish with mocha on the aftertaste. I would drink this over the next decade.

A consistently excellent wine, this is fully in its drinking window, showcasing fleshy raspberry and redcurrant fruit, sage and saffron, juicy as ever, but not quite the salt-scraping tension that you find in 2016 or in the more recent years. A luscious Pavie-Macquin all the same. Nicolas Thienpont winemaker.

This was a vintage where I really began to sit up and take notice of this estate as reguarly producing something extraordinary. Takes a heartbeat to get going, but you are rewarded with sculpted blueberry and raspberry fruits, mocha and liqourice, and a delicate feeling of tiptoing across a slate-strewn palate even at this young stage of six years old. Saline and pummice stone finish, with gonsmoke and black truffle curling out of the glass. Part of the warm vintages series within this vertical. 60% new oak.