2023 Pavie

The Grand Vin 2023 Château Pavie is based on 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Cabernet Sauvignon that was brought up in 72% new oak. It's a more inward, serious effort that has a layered bouquet of ripe red and black fruits, spicy oak, spring flowers, and smoke tobacco. This carries to a full-bodied 2023 revealing a beautiful sense of minerality, ample mid-palate depth, and a gorgeous finish. It shows the more elegant, vibrant style of the vintage while still being classic Pavie. If anything, it reminds me slightly of the château's 2001.

With its black purple color, and just a single swirl you find blackberries, black cherries, cassis, mint, tobacco leaves, spice, and oceanic influences. The palate is even better with its layers of black, and red fruits with their gorgeous sense of purity. The wine is concentrated, deep, long, and intense, as is the minerality. There is an electric vibrance providing a racy mouthfeel that energizes the fruit in the long, expansive finish, buttressed with its aromatics on the palate. The key to the vintage was the ability to wait for the right moments to pick each varietal. To illustrate that point, some of the oldest Merlot vines were harvested after the Cabernet. The wine blends 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and 17% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.25% ABV, pH 3.66. Harvesting took place September 18 - October 5.

The 2023 Pavie is deep garnet-purple in color. It needs a few moments of swirling to unlock scents of blueberry pie, cassis, and preserved plums, eventually giving way to a gorgeous perfume of violets, star anise, cedar chest, and iron ore. The medium to full-bodied palate shimmers with bright, fresh black fruit layers, framed by firm, ripe, rounded tannins and Pavie's signature tension, finishing very long and very fragrant. This is breathtaking! The blend is 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and 17% Cabernet Sauvignon, with pH 3.66.