2021 Château Valandraud

The 2021 Valandraud is sumptuous, dark and enveloping to the core, even it some of the underlying contours need time to soften. Black cherry, plum, mocha, new leather and spice gain intensity in the glass. The rich, heady style is classic Valandraud, tempered by the distinctive qualities of the 2021 vintage.

- Antonio Galloni (12/2023)

Black berry, pine nut, bark and dark mushroom aromas follow through to a medium body with creamy tannins that caress the palate and give a complexity and subtlety at the finish. Extremely fine velvety texture here. A beauty for the vintage. Drink in three or four years. (07/2024)

Tasted on multiple occasions, the 2021 Château Valandraud is based on 85% Merlot, 9% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Cabernet Sauvignon. It's a serious wine in the vintage and has a dense purple hue to go with brilliant aromatics of ripe blackberries, currants, smoked tobacco, graphite, and an undeniable sense of minerality. This ripe, medium to full-bodied 2021 has a layered, balanced mouthfeel, nicely integrated background oak, more mid-palate depth than just about every other wine in the vintage, and a gorgeous finish. It will benefit from 3-5 years of bottle age and drink well for 15+ years. (04/2024)

Valandraud 2021 has a medium to deep garnet-purple color. It rolls out with ready-to-go notes of juicy blackberries, fresh plums, and Bing cherries, leading to touches of lilacs and licorice. The medium-bodied palate has a great intensity of lively black fruits, with firm, grainy tannins and a long, savory finish. (04/2024)

Boasts a blackberry and black currant fruit core that belies the vintage's generally light persona, while a chalky structure and notes of sweet tobacco and bay leaf fill in nicely through the finish. Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Drink now through 2036. 2,000 cases made, 400 cases imported.

- J.M.

The 2021 Valandraud offers up aromas of minty berries framed by a generous application of creamy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, with a creamy attack that segues into a mid-palate built around chalky barrel tannins, it concludes with a vanillin-inflected and discreetly herbal finish. This showed more harmoniously en primeur than in bottle.

- William Kelley (02/2024)