Petrus Pomerol 2022 750ml Case of 3

I am amazed by the freshness and blue fruits here in such a hot year. So much crunchy forest-fruit character like strawberries and raspberries with fantastic peaches and orange peel. Black olives and cloves. Full-bodied yet framed and formed with extremely silky tannins and great beauty. Superbalanced and incredible for the vintage. The ethereal quality of this wine is truly wonderful. Best after 2029.

The 2022 Pétrus has turned out even better than I anticipated en primeur, displaying breathtaking purity and integration. Unwinding in the glass with aromas of mulberries, minty cherries, rose petals and violets, it's full-bodied, dense and layered, with huge depth at the core, sweet, powdery tannins and a long, resonant finish. This is a profound Pétrus in the making that exemplifies controlled power. Olivier Berrouet opted to shorten the time in barrel by a couple of months to preserve vibrancy.

The 2022 Petrus has a gorgeous bouquet, very pure and brimming with energy, with exquisite delineation and poise, yet you get the impression that it is holding something back for later. The palate is framed by filigree tannins, pitch-perfect acidity, with real weight and depth towards the finish but absolutely no heaviness. This is a supremely gifted Pomerol. Tasted blind at the Southwold tasting in London.

An explosion of aromatics - vibrant, perfumed, and alive. Dried herbs, violets, and cherries lead the nose, more floral than fruity at this stage, with cooling blue fruits, inkiness, and a hint of cola. Sun-kissed blackcurrants, damsons, and plums bring richness, yet there’s a refreshing lift. The palate is succulent and mouthwatering, with juicy clarity and a soft liquorice grip from the tannins. Sleek yet powerful, its structure stretches but never overwhelms. Vibrant, joyful, and effortlessly complete, with an interplay of concentration and acidity that makes it utterly compelling. A wine that brings a smile, pure finesse on show and amazingly complete at this stage 3.65pH. Ageing was two months shorter than usual.

This is 100% Merlot as it has been for many years now, and it started life with a short 17-day cuvaison, and gentle remontage and no pigeage, to control the extraction. The élevage was in 50% new oak, the remaining 50% second-fill barrels first used in 2020, with 16 months in barrel in total. A remarkable colour in the glass, dark mulberry, concentrated yet not opaque. Smoky berry fruits follow on the nose, with dark chocolate and bramble, liquorice with a touch of sage and fragrant iris root complexity. There is a little caramelised oak as well, but this will fade. Coming back to it more smoky complexities emerge, with notes of raspberry, violet and a touch of toasted coffee bean. This all precedes a palate with a generous texture, velvety although not dense or overly extracted, merely polished, finessed, complete, confident, with a beautifully integrated backbone of tannins, barely noticeable at first, and then apparent at the finish, wrapped around black fruit skins and oak. A great vintage for Petrus, with nicely balanced acidity adding freshness, and I can see this evolving over many decades. This is one feather all Petrus-lovers will want to have in their cap. The alcohol is declared to be 14.5%.

The 2022 Château Pétrus is a powerhouse as well as one of the most concentrated wines in the vintage. Harvested on September 1 (the earliest harvest since 2003), this deep purple-hued beauty offers an inward yet layered bouquet of ripe black cherries, currants, woodsmoke, chocolate, and truffly earth. This carries to a quintessential Petrus offering full-bodied richness and depth as well as flawless balance. There's no shortage of structure, and it has a dense mid-palate, ripe, building tannins and a gorgeous finish. It gains purity and freshness as it sits in the glass, but this a wine that demands a solid decade, if not more, of bottle age and will be just about immortal.

This delivers a singular as well as reserved expression of plum, mulberry and boysenberry compote flavors that drive along without flinching. There's a polished structure, and a subtle tug of cold clay gives this a seamless and deftly inlaid grounding wire. But this is pretty much the fruit, the whole fruit and nothing but the fruit. Drink now through 2045. From France. (Highly Recommended)