2020 Château Malescot St Exupery, Margaux, Bordeaux

2020 Château Malescot St Exupery, Margaux, Bordeaux

Product: 20208123826
Prices start from £275.00 per case Buying options
2020 Château Malescot St Exupery, Margaux, 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 49%, Cabernet Sauvignon 44%, Cabernet Franc 4%, Petit Verdot 3%

Harvest here was late relative to most neighbours, but not unusual for the estate. The wine will rest on light lees during the ageing, with minimal racking – although those full results will not be seen at this stage. There’s a lot of Merlot this year; the Cabernet berries were small. The oak has been dialled down a notch, and there’s a pleasant sense of composure across a smooth and creamy palate which, whilst not singing, is still very satisfying.

Drink 2027-2040

wine at a glance

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Critics reviews

Neal Martin, Vinous94-96/100
The 2020 Malescot St. Exupery was picked at 31hl/ha. It has a bouquet that I would describe as controlled opulence: lavish blueberry, Dorset plums, crushed violet and incense burst from the glass... but in orderly fashion. The palate is medium-bodied with ripe and succulent tannins that lend this Margaux a fleshy texture, yet there is clearly ample structure, as well as marvelous salinity and precision on the finish. This 2020 continues the purple patch for this property and comes highly recommended.

Drink from 2025 to 2048

Neal Martin, Vinous (May 2021) Read more
Antonio Galloni, Vinous93-95/100
The 2020 Malescot Saint Exupéry offers up scents of scorched earth, licorice, smoke, gravel and menthol. Powerful, bold and savory, the 2020 possesses remarkable depth and tons of character. Malescot has been one of the under the radar gems in Bordeaux these last few years. The 2020 is another gorgeous wine from the château.

Drink from 2032 to 2050

Antonio Galloni, Vinous (June 2021) Read more
Jane Anson92/100
Enjoyable black fruit aromatics on the nose, they do a good job here of soft pedalling the extraction on the attack, although by the mid palate we are in bitter chocolate and liquorice territory. Again, concentration and intensity is an overriding signature of the vintage. 3% Petit Verdot completes the blend. A yield of 31hl/ha.

Drink 2026 - 2040

Jane Anson, Decanter.com (May 2021) Read more
Wine Advocate95-97/100
Sporting a deep purple-black color, the 2020 Malescot St. Exupery prances out of the glass with showy scents of ripe black and red currants, black cherries, raspberry leaves and ground cloves, plus wafts of lilacs and tilled soil. Medium to full-bodied, the palate delivers mouth-coating black and red fruit layers with a firm, grainy texture and well-balanced acidity, finishing on a lingering fragrant-earth note.

Drink 2026 - 2050

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate (May 2021) Read more
James Suckling97-98/100
Solid red with blackberry, blueberry, chocolate and spice. Lots of hazelnut, too. It’s full-bodied with chewy, polished tannins and a long, flavorful finish. Best of the trilogy vintages?

James Suckling (April 2021) Read more
Jeb Dunnuck93-95/100
Lots of cassis, blackberries, toasted spices, and vanilla-tinged oak define the nose of the 2020 Château Malescot Saint Exupery, and it’s medium to full-bodied, round, and supple on the palate. With velvety tannins, terrific mid-palate depth, and the classic purity of fruit that’s the hallmark of the vintage, it builds nicely with time in the glass and is another incredibly impressive Margaux that will have two decades or more of prime drinking.

Jeb Dunnuck, jebdunnuck.com (May 2021) Read more
Michael Schuster91-93/100
Blackberry-sweet to smell; full, fresh, and finely, if firmly tannic; deep and sweet in ripe black fruit, full, round, long to taste, ample and satisfying, a gentle subtlety of taste, mouthcoating, sapid, and with lovely fruit length; a most seductive abundance of ripe Merlot flesh, well-contained and defined by its Cabernet tannin frame. This will make a delicious bottle in its fruit-rich, fulsome style. At 49% there is a particularly high proportion of Merlot this year (it is usually more like one third), but Jean-Luc simply said, “The Cabernets were very small and lacking juice, and the Merlots so very good, so, why not include them all?” Why not indeed, and the result speaks for itself. You’ll be able to drink this relatively early, but it will keep and age well

Drink 2028 - 2050

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

About this WINE

Chateau Malescot St Exupery

Chateau Malescot St Exupery

Château Malescot-St-Exupéry, a 3ème Cru Classé Margaux property, can trace its history back to the 18th century. Over the years its reputation slipped and the estate became dilapidated and run-down.

In 1955 Malescot-St-Exupéry was purchased by the Zuger family who invested heavily in the estate, and it is now one of the best-maintained and most quality-driven of the Margaux crus. Today it is run by Jean-Luc Zuger. The winery and the cellars are located in the town of Margaux, while the vineyards now consist of five separate parcels in the commune of Margaux.

Malescot-St-Exupéry's wine is a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot - it is matured in oak barriques, 80% of which are new, for 16 months and is bottled unfiltered.

Malescot-St-Exupéry can be light and lean when young but after 6-7 years of cellaring displays a seductive perfume and a harmonious and silky texture which few wines from Margaux can match.

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Margaux

Margaux

If Pauillac can be seen as the bastion of ‘traditional’ Red Bordeaux, then Margaux represents its other facet in producing wines that are among Bordeaux’s most sensual and alluring. It is the largest commune in the Médoc, encompassing the communes of Cantenac, Soussans, Arsac and Labaude, in addition to Margaux itself. Located in the centre of the Haut-Médoc, Margaux is the closest of the important communes to the city of Bordeaux.

The soils in Margaux are the lightest and most gravelly of the Médoc, with some also containing a high percentage of sand. Vineyards located in Cantenac and Margaux make up the core of the appelation with the best vineyard sites being located on well-drained slopes, whose lighter soils give Margaux its deft touch and silky perfumes. Further away from the water, there is a greater clay content and the wines are less dramatically perfumed.

Margaux is the most diffuse of all the Médoc appelations with a reputation for scaling the heights with irreproachable wines such as Ch. Margaux and Ch. Palmer, but also plumbing the depths, with too many other châteaux not fulfilling their potential. There has been an upward shift in recent years, but the appellation cannot yet boast the reliability of St Julien. However, the finest Margaux are exquisitely perfumed and models of refinement and subtlety which have few parallels in Bordeaux.

Recommended Châteaux: Ch. Margaux, Ch. Palmer, Ch. Brane-Cantenac, Ch. Rauzan-Ségla , Ch. Dufort-Vivens, Ch. Ferrière, Ch. du Tertre, Ch. Giscours, Ch. d'Angludet.

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Cabernet Sauvignon Blend

Cabernet Sauvignon Blend

Cabernet Sauvignon lends itself particularly well in blends with Merlot. This is actually the archetypal Bordeaux blend, though in different proportions in the sub-regions and sometimes topped up with Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.

In the Médoc and Graves the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend can range from 95% (Mouton-Rothschild) to as low as 40%. It is particularly suited to the dry, warm, free- draining, gravel-rich soils and is responsible for the redolent cassis characteristics as well as the depth of colour, tannic structure and pronounced acidity of Médoc wines. However 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines can be slightly hollow-tasting in the middle palate and Merlot with its generous, fleshy fruit flavours acts as a perfect foil by filling in this cavity.

In St-Emilion and Pomerol, the blends are Merlot dominated as Cabernet Sauvignon can struggle to ripen there - when it is included, it adds structure and body to the wine. Sassicaia is the most famous Bordeaux blend in Italy and has spawned many imitations, whereby the blend is now firmly established in the New World and particularly in California and  Australia.

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