2015 Château Ausone, St Emilion, Bordeaux

2015 Château Ausone, St Emilion, Bordeaux

Product: 20158008785
Prices start from £742.00 per bottle (75cl). Buying options
2015 Château Ausone, St Emilion, Bordeaux

Buying options

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Bottle (75cl)
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£742.00
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Description

50% Merlot, 50% Cabernet Franc.

This Grand Vin in 2015 has a wonderful quality. Its hilltop location looking out over the appellation always makes it a glorious property to visit, and we loved the wine this year. Sweet, succulent, and beautifully perfumed with floral aromas and a touch of vanilla spice, there is real focus here. This great estate has used its renowned terroir to create a wine full of multi-layered fruit complexity. Really focused, rewarding, and utterly charming, the mouth-filling creamy palate offers a richness of flavour that lingers long on the finish. This epic wine is one of the very best produced by the Bordelais in 2015.

Berry Bros. & Rudd

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Critics reviews

Jane Anson99/100

Vibrant medium intensity cherry red, the limestone fingerprint clear even visually in that it is more jewel-like than most in the vintage. A masterclass in what slate scrape and pumice stone means when talking about texture in a wine, set against a caress of black cherry, raspberry, white tea, pomegranate, gunsmoke, leather, exceptional with a juicy finish, truly outstanding - and this is a higher score than I gave it back in 2022 in a vertical at the estate. 85% new oak for ageing.

Drink 2025 to 2040

Jane Anson, janeanson.com (February 2024) Read more

Neal Martin, Vinous98/100

The 2015 Ausone has a detailed, precise bouquet whose intense, graphite-infused black fruit gains intensity with each swirl. This is very sophisticated and compelling. The poised, medium-bodied palate delivers filigreed tannin, perfect acidity and an extraordinarily persistent finish that outclasses almost everything around it. This is outstanding and surely represents one of the wines of the vintage.

Neal Martin, Vinous.com (July 2019)

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Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW100/100

Ausone 2015 is a blend of 50% Merlot and 50% Cabernet Franc and has a medium to deep garnet color. It needs considerably swirling and air to begin to reveal notes of iron ore, Chinese five spice, underbrush, and black truffles, before it opens out to a core of fruitcake, dried roses, licorice, and blueberry preserves, plus a hint of kirsch. Full-bodied, rich and powerful in the mouth, the palate delivers a solid core of muscular fruit with firm yet velvety tannins and seamless freshness, finishing with incredible length and jaw dropping layers. Incredible!

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW , The Wine Independent (November 2022)

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Jancis Robinson MW19/20

Dark crimson with some purple. Real class and concentration on the nose - all vineyard, surely. Brisk yet very opulent. Lots of drive and no oak in evidence. Very fine. Very long.

Drink 2025 - 2050

Jancis Robinson MW, JancisRobinson.com (January 2019)

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James Suckling99/100

Very intense and aromatic Ausone with rose petals, fresh herbs, dark berries and raspberries. Full body and great intensity and brightness. Purity and focus reminiscent of crushed grapes. Such beauty, greatness and elegance to this wine. Goes on for minutes. Needs four or five years to come completely together but so long and beautiful.

Try drinking in 2021

James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (February 2018)

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Decanter96/100

50% each Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Suave texture but so much power behind. Fine, fragrant nose of pure berry fruit then real density and depth on the palate. Layered fruit and tannins but finely etched. Clean, long and persistent.

Drink 2025 - 2045

James Lawther MW, Decanter.com

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About this WINE

Château Ausone

Château Ausone

Château Ausone is a wine estate in St Emilion on the Right Bank of Bordeaux. It takes its name from the poet Ausonius, who is thought to have owned a villa where the estate stands today – just outside the medieval village of St Emilion. Ausone’s vineyards sit atop St Emilion’s limestone plateau and extend in terraces down the côtes. There are just over six hectares of vines planted today, mostly Cabernet Franc along with Merlot. The team practice organic and biodynamic viticulture though without certification.

The estate belongs to the Vauthier family, led by Alain Vauthier and his children, Pauline and Edouard. In 1955, Ausone was ranked at the very top of the St Emilion classification – as Premier Grand Cru Classé A – alongside Château Cheval Blanc. In 2021, both Ausone and Cheval Blanc announced that they were voluntarily withdrawing from the classification.

Ausone is known for its structured, long-lived wines. A second wine, Chapelle d’Ausone, was introduced in the 1990s. The Vauthier family also own a number of other properties nearby in St Emilion, including Château Moulin Saint-Georges, Château La Clotte and Château de Fonbel.

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St Émilion

St Émilion

St Émilion is one of Bordeaux's largest producing appellations, producing more wine than Listrac, Moulis, St Estèphe, Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux put together. St Emilion has been producing wine for longer than the Médoc but its lack of accessibility to Bordeaux's port and market-restricted exports to mainland Europe meant the region initially did not enjoy the commercial success that funded the great châteaux of the Left Bank. 

St Émilion itself is the prettiest of Bordeaux's wine towns, perched on top of the steep limestone slopes upon which many of the region's finest vineyards are situated. However, more than half of the appellation's vineyards lie on the plain between the town and the Dordogne River on sandy, alluvial soils with a sprinkling of gravel. 

Further diversity is added by a small, complex gravel bed to the north-east of the region on the border with Pomerol.  Atypically for St Émilion, this allows Cabernet Franc and, to a lesser extent, Cabernet Sauvignon to prosper and defines the personality of the great wines such as Ch. Cheval Blanc.  

In the early 1990s there was an explosion of experimentation and evolution, leading to the rise of the garagistes, producers of deeply-concentrated wines made in very small quantities and offered at high prices.  The appellation is also surrounded by four satellite appellations, Montagne, Lussac, Puisseguin and St. Georges, which enjoy a family similarity but not the complexity of the best wines.

St Émilion was first officially classified in 1954, and is the most meritocratic classification system in Bordeaux, as it is regularly amended. The most recent revision of the classification was in 2012

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Merlot

Merlot

The most widely planted grape in Bordeaux and a grape that has been on a relentless expansion drive throughout the world in the last decade. Merlot is adaptable to most soils and is relatively simple to cultivate. It is a vigorous naturally high yielding grape that requires savage pruning - over-cropped Merlot-based wines are dilute and bland. It is also vital to pick at optimum ripeness as Merlot can quickly lose its varietal characteristics if harvested overripe.

In St.Emilion and Pomerol it withstands the moist clay rich soils far better than Cabernet grapes, and at it best produces opulently rich, plummy clarets with succulent fruitcake-like nuances. Le Pin, Pétrus and Clinet are examples of hedonistically rich Merlot wines at their very best. It also plays a key supporting role in filling out the middle palate of the Cabernet-dominated wines of the Médoc and Graves.

Merlot is now grown in virtually all wine growing countries and is particularly successful in California, Chile and Northern Italy.

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When is a wine ready to drink?

We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.

Not ready

These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.

Ready - youthful

These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.

Ready - at best

These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.

Ready - mature

These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.