Tanzer Score: 94

Score: 96-100 RP

Region: Bordeaux

District: Saint Emilion

Type: Still Wine

Color: Red

Varietal: Red Bordeaux

Vintage: 2009

Futures Item: Yes

Brand: See more from Chateau Pavie

Sku: 132347

Price: $161.99

Quantity:   

Wine Spectator Review:
Blackberry, black cherry, licorice and mineral. Full-bodied, with a big core of velvety tannins and rich fruit. Full throttle, and all there. Really massive. Blockbuster and more. Could be a tad overdone. But we will see in bottle. Score range 94-97

Parker Review:
Another brilliant effort from Gerard Perse, this great vineyard (now just over 90 acres in size with the average age of the vines 45 years) was cropped at 28 hectoliters per hectare. It obviously missed all the damaging hail in mid-May of 2009, and was harvested between October 5 and 15. Everything here is done with extraordinary gentleness and precision. The result is a powerful, full-bodied, remarkably intense wine that is black/purple in color. It will require considerable patience, much like 2000 and 2005. It displays enormous creme de cassis and boysenberry fruit with some cherries, spice box, and crushed rock in the background. It is intense, with loads of minerality, huge extraction, massive power, yet again, the vintage character seems to have given it a freshness and vibrancy despite the wines obvious viscosity. The minimum patience required is at least a decade, as this is another 40-year wine from Gerard Perse. 96-100 points.

Tanzer Review:
Bright saturated ruby with hints of inky highlights. Black fruits, licorice, coffee and oaky torrefaction on the nose, with menthol in the background. Quite tightly wound in the early going, with brisk acids framing the dense, rich flavors of cassis, coffee, minerals, truffle and bitter chocolate. This full-bodied wine shows a minty reserve, finishing very firm but not hard or dry, with a solid tannic spine. The slowly building, very long finish features subtle flinty and floral nuances, and a pronounced smoky oak component. This Pavie continues the recent trend toward somewhat less massive wines, and scaling back somewhat on the percentage of new oak appears to have been the right move.