Fine Wine > Still > $20-50 > 92-95 Pts > France

Cellar/Tasting Notes
... the 2009 Les Gravieres is the best wine proprietor Denis Barraud has ever produced. Yields were not terribly low at 38 hectoliters per hectare, but this wine (made with 100% Merlot and finishing at just under 14% alcohol) has a spectacular, even flamboyant nose of pen ink, graphite, blackberry..

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"... Pronounced nutty piquancy and wet stone in the nose as well as on the palate here mingle with smoky snuffed candle wick and black tea; quince and white peach...this Clos du Papillon grips so authoritatively and combines such a sense of stuffing and stone without becoming heavy or bitter than..

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"Full-on apple and quince flavors provide the richness to balance the briskness of the soil character. This is sunny and earthy at once, mouthwatering in its freshness, firmly structured for aging."

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"Combines power & elegance. Big and dense, yet fresh and very pretty, marked by gobs of red fruits & a long, elegant finish brimming with hints of violets and wood. This is a 'wow' wine."

Cellar/Tasting Notes
…exquisitely fragrant, ethereal nose of licorice, kirsch, sandy, loamy soil and spice box. The remarkable perfume and expansive texture are amazing… Grenache at its finest.

Cellar/Tasting Notes
This property has made so many fine efforts lately that it is difficult to say the 2009 is better than their 2005. However, the 2009 is a charming, sexy, dense ruby/purple-colored offering displaying lots of ripe Merlot fruit intermixed with hints of charcoal, black raspberries, black currants,..

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"... loads of roasted Provencal herbs, sweet black cherry, black currants and black raspberries, beautiful purity, full-bodied texture and a long finish."

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"… stunning purity and precision… deep, pure and very stony in personality, with a great core of fruit, utterly refined, but serious tannins, bright acids and superb focus and grip on the very long, soil-driven finish."

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"A sleeper of the vintage, this impressive St. Emilion, made by Dominique Hebrard, exhibits a pure nose of red and black fruits intertwined with spice box, dried herbs, and subtle wood. Medium-bodied, beautifully concentrated, and pure with good acidity as well as ripe tannin, it should drink well..

Cellar/Tasting Notes
"Red raspberry, fresh cherry, and smoked meat (approaching pork rinds) greet the nose, with notes of ceiling wax and rose hip emerging as the wine takes on air. On the palate, this displays the juicy fresh fruit elements and diversity of mineral suggestions one has come to expect from this estate;..