CHÂTEAU LE TERTRE RÔTEBOEUF

The 2020 Tertre-Rôteboeuf has exquisite purity on the nose, to the point where I could not decide whether the aromatics resembled a fine Romanée-Saint-Vivant or a Saint-Émilion. Maybe a mixture of the two? There are plush black cherries, cassis and vanilla, and creamy new oak but wonderfully integrated. The palate is medium-bodied with fine-grained tannins. This particular sample, from a half-bottle, did demonstrate quite a bit of wood tannin, especially on the finish, but that will be subsumed by the oak, and as my glass warmed up, it did become more enmeshed. I suspect this Tertre-Rôteboeuf will require more bottle aging than previous vintages. Drinking range: 2028 - 2050 Rating: 93-95 Neal Martin, www.vinous.com (May 2021)

One of the wines of the vintage will be the 2020 Château Tertre Roteboeuf, which has its classic exotic, boisterous, incredibly sexy personality front and center. Cassis, smoked meats, vanilla, graphite, white truffle, and a liqueur of rocks-like minerality are just some of the nuances here, and it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, incredibly purity, building tannins, and a blockbuster of a finish. I followed this barrel sample for just under a week and it never showed a hint of oxidation or fatigue. This cuvée always shows lots of oak (it’s brought up in 100% new barrels), especially in its youth, but it is incredibly well-integrated and largely disappears once at full maturity. Hide bottles for 7-8 years if you can, and it’s going to keep for 30 years or more. Rating: 97-99 Jeb Dunnuck, www.jebdunnuck.com (May 2021)

I feel like I need to warm up and stretch before unleashing this mighty wine from its bottle. Even though the TR quartet arrived in half-bottle format it seems that the Grand Vin requires more effort to lift and pour its contents such is the structure and intensity of this wine. On the palate it is centred, brooding and ever so slightly menacing. The nose is hugely powerful and black-fruited and even the oak notes wait their turn for the fruit to greet the palate and then stride away in its flowing robes of flavour. This is a big wine, and a flamboyant one, too, but it has searing freshness on the finish and there is true balance here in spite of the density of exotic fruit. Texturally, this is a fantastic treat because there is so much to hold onto and this makes Tertre Roteboeuf a hedonistic delight in 2020. Rating: 18.5 Matthew Jukes www.matthewjukes.com (May 2021)

This is a powerful, deeply focused and intense. Plenty of spice, cassis pastille, intense muscular tannins, fairly closed and austere right now, but a real sense of lift and juice becomes clear after 10 minutes of opening in the glass. Harvest began on September 21st, the earliest since Mitjavile arrived at the estate. Recently had the beautiful 1998 of Tertre Roteboeuf, and it is easy to see that this vintage also will allow the limestone terroir to become clearer with bottle age. Drinking range: 2024 - 2036 Rating: 95 Jane Anson, Decanter (May 2021)