2020 Château Larcis Ducasse, St Emilion, Bordeaux

2020 Château Larcis Ducasse, St Emilion, Bordeaux

Product: 20201012185
Prices start from £345.00 per case Buying options
2020 Château Larcis Ducasse, St Emilion, Bordeaux

Buying options

Available by the case In Bond. Pricing excludes duty and VAT, which must be paid separately before delivery. Storage charges apply.
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6 x 75cl bottle
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Description

Merlot 90%, Cabernet Franc 10%

The 2020 Larcis Ducasse is rather impressive. The nose is full, rich and ripe, with notes of crème de cassis, dark raspberry and strawberry flumps. This is a very big wine, with the Merlot in the blend dominating the style. Rich, ripe forest fruits offer incredible depth, with the tannins just grippy enough to provide balance.

Drink 2025-2040

Joshua Friend, Private Account Manager, Berry Bros. & Rudd (May 2021)

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Critics reviews

Neal Martin, Vinous94-96/100
The 2020 Larcis Ducasse has a ripe, exotic bouquet lavished with blueberries, cassis, touches of date and crushed violets. The aromatics are rich and powerful. The palate is medium-bodied with rounded tannins and a fine bead of acidity, displaying more puppy fat than its peers. The precocious finish offers crushed strawberry, maraschino and faint dark chocolate scents. This is a typical Larcis Ducasse in many ways, perhaps not one for those seeking a more traditional Saint-Émilion, but very sensual and ravishing.

Drink from 2027 to 2055

Neal Martin, Vinous (May 2021) Read more
Antonio Galloni, Vinous95-97/100
The 2020 Larcis Ducasse captures all the pedigree of the year in its savory, mineral-driven personality. Graphite, dried herbs, lavender, spice and menthol lend striking aromatic intensity. The 2020 is a rich, deep wine, yet it retains the classic midweight sense of structure that is a signature of the estate. The 2020 is quite simply a dazzling Larcis.

Drink from 2025 to 2060

Antonio Galloni, Vinous (June 2021) Read more
Jane Anson97/100
Great consistency over the past few years at this property but this is really stepping things up a level. With poise and depth of flavour, we are digging down through the layers. Extremely elegant, a wine that is precise and pared back and totally delicious. You can almost feel the points of minerality poking into your tongue, but then they melt into a softer more luxurious whole, with blackberry, cassis and black chocolate. Great stuff. Tasted several times, and every time it shows itself to be something out of the ordinary. A brilliant wine that I thoroughly recommend getting hold of. 50% new oak. A yield of 38.5hl/ha. Owned by Famille Gratiot-Attmane, but with the Nicolas Thienpont team overseeing winemaking.

Drink 2028 - 2046

Jane Anson, Decanter.com (May 2021) Read more
Wine Advocate96-98/100
The 2020 Larcis Ducasse has a deep purple-black color, leaping from the glass with bold notions of redcurrant jelly, plum preserves, kirsch and red roses, followed by hints of licorice, fragrant earth and spice cake, with a touch of woodsmoke. The medium to full-bodied palate is laden with fragrant red berries and profound black fruit preserves, supported by ripe, rounded tannins and lovely tension, finishing very long and fantastically layered. Absolutely, stunningly singular.

Drink from 2026 to 2050

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate (May 2021) Read more
Jancis Robinson MW16+/20
Cask sample taken 6 April. 90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc. Dark purplish crimson. Black fruit flavours – mulberries? – on the nose. Rich, sweet and almost buttery in texture. Then a whack of dry tannins kick in. Very youthful with zestiness on the end.

Drink 2028 - 2044

Jancis Robinson MW, jancisrobinson.com (April 2021) Read more
James Suckling97-98/100
Blackberry and asphalt with cool minerals and a hint of mint. It’s full-bodied and chewy with intense flavors and a long, flavorful finish. Lots of chalk and an almost salty undertone.

James Suckling, jamessuckling.com (April 2021) Read more
Michael Schuster92-93/100
Dense, but fine, black-fruit ripe and minerally; full and vigorous, and firm but fairly fine in tannin; deep and vital and ripe in flavor, quite strong, but not coarse, long and juicy and sapid within the overall gentle force, aromatic and minerally behind this, and with fine length. Tasty above all, and probably needing a good decade to soften its sinews.

Drink 2030 - 2050

Michael Schuster, The World of Fine Wine (May 2021) Read more

About this WINE

Chateau Larcis Ducasse

Chateau Larcis Ducasse

Traditionally Ch. Larcis Ducasse, a St Emilion Grand Cru Classé, was regarded as a property with exceptional terrior but a constant underperformer. This has changed, mainly thanks to the talents of a new winemaking team headed up by Nicolas Thienpont (of Ch. Pavie Macquin repute) and Stephane Derenoncourt (the mercurial 'flying wine consultant') who have managed to unlock the potential of this sleeping giant.

The estate is located on one of Bordeaux's finest strips of terroir - the Cote Pavie in St Emilion. Here, this 25-acre property abuts the 1er Grand Cru Classé Ch. Pavie estate. The vines are planted on an eclectic range of soils - alluvial sand deposits, clay, chalk and limestone. The vines, as one would expect for that part of the world, are predominately Merlot (some 75%) Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The new winemaking team arrived in 2002 and since then, the wines have gone from strength to strength. Look out especially for the 2005 Ch. Larcis Ducasse (98/100 Parker), 2006 Ch. Larcis Ducasse (91-94 Parker) and 2007 Ch. Larcis Ducasse (92-94 Parker), as these are the manifestation of all the hard work undertaken at the château over recent years.

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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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