Chateau Pavie Saint Emilion Grand Cru 2022 1.5Ltr

Looking at the Grand Vin, the 2022 Château Pavie is 52% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc, and 18% Cabernet Sauvignon raised in 75% new barrels for 20 months. It brings a more focused, precise style in its darker berries, graphite, crushed stone, and floral aromatics and flavors. These carry to a full-bodied Pavie with flawless overall balance, ultra-fine tannins, and a great finish. This pure, powerful, yet aristocratic Pavie will benefit from 7-8 years (you can drink it even today) and have 3-4 decades of longevity.

A mixture of dried herbs, blackcurrant leaf, blueberry, violets, vanilla and salty stones on the nose. Intense and complex, it’s upfront and mouth-filling with chewy, fleshy tannins but lifted by vibrant acidity. Controlled power, pure fruit focus, and a joyful, crunchy texture. Salty spice, liquorice, black chocolate, and clove add depth to the finish. A charming, structured wine, full of promise.

The grand vin from Pavie, tasted in Scotland as the wines were deemed not ready to taste by the Pavie winemaking team when I visited Bordeaux in December, is a blend of 52% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc and 18% Cabernet Sauvignon. The vintage is noticeable because it is the first under the new 2022 St Emilion classification, which permitted the vines of both Pavie-Decesse and Bellevue-Mondotte to be absorbed into the Pavie vineyard, signalling the end of the road for both those properties. Now it is in bottle – with its engraved ‘label’ to celebrate 25 years of Perse family ownership of the estate – the 2022 Pavie explodes with an array of rich fruit on the nose, all blackcurrant and dark griottes, all very clearly defined, backed up by a frame of crushed gravel and dark chocolate. The palate builds on this with a firm frame of rich and ripe tannins, confidently knit together, coated in dark and perfumed summer fruits, before a lengthy finish infused with ripe tannin and powdery oak. This is a superb grand vin with huge cellaring potential. The alcohol is 14.47% on analysis, with 14.5% on the label.

This takes the showy fruit of the vintage and amplifies it, adding warm cocoa, melted licorice and roasted apple wood accents that fuel the core of boysenberry, plum and blackberry reduction flavors. Broad-shouldered in feel, with a deep well of fruit in reserve, this rumbles through the amply toasty finish. For the hedonist crowd. Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Best from 2029 through 2045. From France.

Big wine. The aromas are very opulent with blackberries, dark plums, ink and chocolate. It's full-bodied and very rich with plenty of fruit yet the tannins are fine and polished. This is a powerful and flavorful wine. Loads going on. This was the first year that included wines of Pavie-Decesse and Bellevue in the blend. Needs five years to come around.

The 2022 Pavie has quite a rich and extravagant nose, layers of black cherries and boysenberry, a little sloe, showy and decadent. Could be Pavie? The palate is medium-bodied with a glossy opening, but there is structure behind all the intense fruit and pleasing mineralité on the finish. Serious, long-term. Tasted blind at the Southwold tasting in London.