Château Haut-Grelot

Julien’s Chemin de l’Estuaire single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the very few single-varietal Cab Sauv's I encountered in my time in Bordeaux. Fermented in oak, aged in barriques for 16 months, and with five years of age from such a great vintage (2020), this wine is showing oh so well. Picked well into October yet only 12.5% this wine boasts full phenolic maturity combined with the Bordeaux structure of decades past. This wine was concentrated and enervating and alluring from the first encounter, like black plums and blackcurrants as if eaten from the tree just moments before they would have fallen to the ground on their own fully-ripened accord. Which is to say I met this wine at the fulcrum between when the fruit was showing its most developed self before turning the corner from fresh fruit notes to dried/jammy/stewed fruit notes. This is a wine that will live its best life married to a properly generous French entrée like a classic bavette steak frites. Tremendous value and a terroir wine all the same. With its intertwining of fine tannin and layered acid and fleet-footed 12.5% alcohol, plus the classical 16 months in 225L French oak, this wine tastes like it could only ever be from Bordeaux—but who’d have guessed such a gem would hail from the Blaye and not the Médoc!