2022 Château Grand Village

The 2022 Grand Village is a powerful, brooding wine. Swaths of tannin wrap around a core of black fruit, gravel, incense, licorice and chocolate in a potent Grand Village that overdelivers. The 2022 is a wine of notable substance and breadth. I wouldn’t dream of opening a bottle for at least a few years. The 2022 is the most intense young Grand Village I have ever tasted. There is serious potential here.

Beautiful blue fruit and chocolate here. Medium- to full-bodied. The tannins are firm and velvety with lots of spice, seashell and iodine notes. Lots of white pepper and sea salt. Fresh. 80% merlot and 20% cabernet franc. (2023)

The 2022 Grand Village (Lafleur)comes from more clay and limestone soils and is 80% Merlot (half of the Merlot is a massale selection from Lafleur) and 10% Bouschet. This beauty is medium to full-bodied and has incredible purity in its ripe red and blue fruits as well as notes of graphite, chocolate, violets, and damp earth. It reminds me of a great Pomerol and brings plenty of richness and depth while staying balanced and finesse-driven. (05/2023)

A blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Bouchet (Cabernet Franc), the 2022 Grand Village has a deep garnet-purple color. It flies out of the glass with vibrant scents of black and red cherries, black raspberries, unsmoked cigars, and fallen leaves, plus touches of lavender and black pepper. (05/2023)

Baptiste Guinaudeau and his team have produced a beautifully pure, perfumed 2022 Grand Village that bursts with aromas of licorice, graphite, blackberries, pencil shaving, iris and fresh mint. Medium to full-bodied, seamless and fleshy, this outstanding wine is perfectly balanced on the palate with velvety tannins and a bright, saline finish. This is one of the very best Grand Villages produced to date, and it benefits from the sort of careful winemaking normally reserved for cru classé wines. It’s a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, although for the latter grape the Guinaudeau family prefers the local name of Bouchet.