CRITIC REVIEWS
Georgina Hindle
Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mocha, tobacco, and vibrant blackcurrant aromas on the nose. This is a sultry, seductive wine, smooth, ripe, round and voluptuous but also sleek and kept in check in that it gives layers of fruit, acidity and freshness but also a spiced frame from which the flavours are contained. Tons of liquorice, almost too much, but giving nuance, style and complexity. It’s broad and muscular, there is power, heft, concentration and intensity, but it’s expertly delivered. Tightly packed, tense and verging on austere but you just know this will be sublime in time. Carefully constructed and a no doubt hit.
Jeb Dunnuck
Based on 62% Cabernet Sauvignon and 38% Merlot, the deep purple-hued 2020 Château Cos DEstournel has, dare I say, an almost Lafite-like sense of elegance and class, offering gorgeous cassis and darker currants fruits as well as tobacco, lead pencil, acacia flowers, and graphite. Hitting 13.46 alcohol, with a pH of 3.9 and an IPT of 80, this flawless, full-bodied, incredibly elegant Saint-Estèphe has silky tannins, perfect balance, and a great, great finish. It will need a decade of cellaring to hit its prime drink window. Of the trilogy of 2018, 2019, and 2020, its clearly my favorite (that’s splitting hairs), with a similarity to the 2016, and will most likely merit another point at maturity.