Haut-Médoc Red Bordeaux Blend

Rounding up from 91.6.

Allen Brothers Lamb Lollipops and the 05 vintage from Bordeaux. 🤔 😋

The 2005 vintage was magical w/ star producers. Very good with the lesser regions like Caronne.

Pretty sure I paid around $25 for this give or take.

The entry is round, lush & rich. Blackberries, black raspberries, black plum, dark cherries and poached strawberries. Dark rich earth, moist clay, lead pencil, tobacco/cigar ash, used leather, dry river stone, dark chocolate cooking bar, black licorice, limestone powder, dry herbs, very light baking spices, dark, red, purple withering flowers, round acidity, balanced, highly structured & tensioned finish that lasts a minute.

This could actually use some more time in bottle, 3-5 yrs.

2016 is a great vintage for Caronne Ste Gemme, as it is for most - but this wine displays a rare sense of great harmony in such a young wine, with fresh aromas ranging from cherries to violets, blackcurrants and wet stones, all of which takes precedence over any secondary characteristics playing a supporting role. The palate is juicy, saturated and quite long for a wine of this level.

A reliable château in good vintages, this is a buy!

Good drinking Bordeaux with soft tannins and ripe dark fruit. Still has a good personality after 7 years

A textbook claret from an obviously excellent vintage, the Caronne Ste. Gemme is a commendable, age worthy wine in fine form today at eleven years of age. It has the ripe fruit of the vintage and an all round harmonious, textbook Médoc profile with rich cassis, blackberry, dark cocoa and coffee bean alongside a slight hint of bell pepper and a tarry note on the finish. Tannins are still very firm, acidity too, suggesting this will drink well on its twentieth birthday. It perhaps lacks the ‘wow’ factor of its peers, but it represents terrific value at the Cru Bourgeois level - as this estate so often does - and should not be overlooked.

I typically very much like this property’s chewy, rustic expression but the 2012 just didn’t have quite enough stuffing to balance the grainy toast and gritty tannins. Worked with steak, needed something to grip on to. I don’t see this vintage evolving in a positive manner, drink up...

From 375. Solid red fruited old school Bordeaux. Lean and direct, with firm tannins and good balance of fruit and savory. No frills, excellent brasserie wine.

Medium garnet; medium plus intensity aromas of dusty red and black fruit, black plum, black currant, black cherry, red plum, leather, old wood, cloves; dry, medium acid, medium plus tannins, medium alcohol, full bodied, medium plus intensity flavors of dried red and black fruit, black cherry, black plum, dusty wood, old leather, clove; long finish, a bit past its prime

My last 375mL of 2010 and this was the best yet. Plums, cassis, pipe tobacco, damp hollowed out log, leather and olive tapenade. Pretty awesome for a Cru Bourgeois.

Good producer, tough vintage. Fruit fades quickly, leaving wood and nutty notes a bit apparent. Dumb phase?

2010 vintage. 40 hectares bordering Saint-Julien. Solid colour. Cassis, black cherries, blackberries and cedar wood. Well-balanced classic Haut-Médoc without great complexity or length, but it is in a very good place now and it shows no signs of fatigue.