2023 Pavie Macquin
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Tasting Notes
An open, expressive vintage for this cuvée, the 2023 Château Pavie Macquin still has that classic darker cherry and cassis-driven perfume as well as beautiful minerality, medium to full body, a ripe, layered, yet focused mouthfeel, and ripe yet integrated tannins. It has the elegant style of the vintage while still being a classic Pavie Macquin. It's going to need 7-8 years of bottle age, but it's clearly an impressive, beautiful wine in the making. Tasted multiple times.
Critic Scores
Average Score
James Suckling
William Kelley, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
Flowers, red berries, spice, licorice, lavender, and sea-salt are featured in the perfume. The wine on the palate is electric, edgy, fresh, and fruity. The berries are ripe, sweet, and pure, with a strong essence of minerality that you really sense as the wine lingers on your palate. The key to the wine this year is two fold. First, the newer plantings from 2013-2016 have started maturing. In the cellars, the aging program is more gentle, with close to half the amount of punch downs, so you have less extractions which allows the wine to feel more relaxed on the palate. Clearly, this is in contention for the best vintage of Pavie Mac, (As it is affectionally known) ever produced. The wine blends 82% Merlot, 17% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Cabernet Sauvignon. 14.1% ABV, 3.5 pH. The harvest took place September 18 - October 3.
The 2023 Pavie Macquin is deep garnet-purple in color. Wow! It prances out with a showy perfume of lilacs, iris bulb, star anise, sandalwood, and Sichuan pepper leading to a core of redcurrant jelly, wild blueberries, and black raspberries plus earthy suggestions of moss-covered tree bark and fallen leaves. The medium to full-bodied palate shimmers with energetic red and black berry layers, framed by firm fine-grained tannins and magic tension, finishing very long with lots of chalky and red berry sparks. This is electric. The pH this year is 3.40.
This is a twitchy, lively red with brambleberry, black olive and a real sense of limestone. The tannins are very well integrated. Lots of energy. Medium body. Extremely long. Very cool, fine wine from this estate in this year. 3.35 pH. 14.2% alcohol. 82% merlot, 17% cabernet franc and 1% cabernet sauvignon. Best ever?
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About the producer
Next time you drink a great glass of Saint-Émilion, you have Château Pavie Macquin to thank. In the late nineteenth century, Albert Macquin introduced the vine growers of Bordeaux to grafting American rootstocks.