2019 ALTER EGO du Château Palmer Margaux Château Palmer, Lea & Sandeman

ALTER EGO

2020 du Château Palmer Margaux

Grapes Cab Sauv, Petit Verdot, Merlot
Colour Red
Origin France, Bordeaux
Sub-district Haut Médoc
Village Margaux
ABV 13%

Gorgeous perfumes of plums, berries, light chocolate and walnut follow through to a medium body, fine tannins and crunchy finish. Bright and fresh. Precise tannins. Drinkable but better after 2027. Rating: 96 James Suckling, www.jamessuckling.com (May 2023)


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The 2020 Alter Ego is phenomenal. Bright acids and lifted floral top notes give the Alter Ego terrific brilliance. The combination of the growing season and a move towards foudres for the second year of élevage yields an Alter Ego that is decidedly linear in construction. The 2020 is going to need a number of years to come around. It's a gorgeous wine, but readers will have to get used to a style that is quite different from the more exuberant wines of the past. It's a very classic Alter Ego and very classic Margaux. Drinking range: 2025 - 2040 Rating: 94 Antonio Galloni, www.vinous.com (Feb 2023)

The 2020 Alter Ego de Palmer has a tightly-wound bouquet that demands a little more coaxing than other Margaux's that I tasted. Quite refined with black cherries, blackcurrant, iris flower and light iodine scents. Lovely definition. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannins, fresh on the entry and quite saline, not as flamboyant as you might expect with a pleasant strictness towards the tannic finish (this is the most tannic Alter Ego ever produced.) Very fine, but serious. Drinking range: 2025 - 2050 Rating: 93 Neal Martin, www.vinous.com (Feb 2023)

A density to smell that is typical of many wines in the year, very Merlot blackberry, and very mineral, too; full and fresh and finely tannic; an immediately showy, ample, fruit-bomb style: generously ripe, amply juicy, fleshy, mouthfilling, spicy, but with fine length to taste, plus the necessary defining freshness, and excellent persistence. A particulary succulent, satisfying Margaux. Drinking range: 2026 - 2040 Rating: 91-93 Michael Schuster, World of Fine Wine (Jun 2021)

Château Palmer

Margaux Troisième cru 1855 What is now Château Palmer was originally part of a larger Château d'Issan but was divided among heirs and came into the ownership of the Gascq family in 1748. The widow of the last of the Gascqs, in 1814, and apparently having met him on a stagecoach, sold the estate to an Englishman, General Charles Palmer, and Château de Gascq became Château Palmer. He extended the estate and built quite a reputation for his wines (especially in London) but financial difficulties forced him to sell up in 1843 and, by the time of the 1855 classification, the reputation of Château Palmer had slipped sufficiently to rate "only" 3rd Growth status - a status it has exceded for most of its subsequent history. The present château was built at the end of the 1850's. In 1938 the Société Civile de Château Palmer was formed to take ownership of the estate, with the Sichel and Mähler-Besse families as leading shareholders, a situation which persists to this day. Château Palmer sits between Margaux and Cantenac, just east of Issan. The 55ha of vines are planted to 47% each of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with the balance being Petit Verdot. The Grand Vin spends 21 months in wood (45% new). The second wine is Alter Ego de Château Palmer. In the best years of General Palmer's reign, the wines of Château Palmer were regarded on a par with those of Château Margaux and, indeed, during the worst years of the 1960's Palmer probably had a better reputation. Today, despite huge improvements by its neighbours, Palmer sits very squarely as the leading Margaux estate that isn't actually Château Margaux.

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