Château Pichon Baron 2019

As always, it is the Cabernet Sauvignon that sings. It brings an impressive structure to the wine, rich tannins and powerful black fruits. The wine is set for aging. It shows all the power and the open quality of the vintage. Drink from 2027. Roger Voss.

Blackberries and blueberries with stone and graphite. Flint and black licorice, too. So perfumed. Full-bodied, very long and linear with incredible length. The new 1990, but better crafted. Chewy, yet so tailored and wonderfully proportioned. Freshness and elegance. Wonderful depth. 87% cabernet sauvignon rest merlot. The highest ever proportion of cabernet. Try after 2026.

Based on 87% Cabernet Sauvignon and 13% Merlot raised in 80% new French oak, the 2019 Château Pichon-Longueville Baron is pure class and just a beautiful, seamless Pauillac that does everything right. Revealing a deep purple hue as well textbook notes of blackcurrants, smoked tobacco, freshly sharpened pencils, and liquid violets, it shows the more medium to full-bodied, elegant style of the vintage yet is brilliantly concentrated, has a supple, layered mouthfeel, ripe yet building tannins, and a great, great finish. It's more open and expressive than Mouton and shares plenty of similarities with Comtesse with its layered, supple, just perfectly balanced and classy style. It unquestionably already offers pleasure today (and it's a good time to try a bottle, as I wouldn't be surprised to see it close down), but it will need a decade to hit maturity and it will be a 50-year wine.

The 2019 Pichon-Longueville Baron will go down as one of this château's great wines of the modern era, along with 2016, 2010 and 1989. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of cassis and plums mingled with notions of cigar wrapper, sweet loamy soil and violets, it's full-bodied, velvety and layered, with superb concentration, lively acids and rich, powdery tannins. Perfumed and resonant, this is a profound young Pauillac that bears more of a resemblance to its neighbor Château Latour than to Pichon Lalande this year. Pichon Baron was one of the great deals of the en primeur campaign, and readers who purchased futures are to be congratulated on their foresight.

At the moment, Pichon Baron is outmuscling it's neighbour across the road. Intense, concentrated and inky dark-currant fruit on the palate with pronounced lead-pencil/mineral notes. 80% new oak. Yet there is more than just power here, with an elegance derived from floral notes, violet aromas, a hint of graphite and velvety tannins. The oak is so well-integrated. A very fine Pauillac with decades of life ahead.