2025 Château Côte de Baleau

The 2025 Côte de Baleau is quite dense in this vintage, largely due to a reduction of fruit from sandier soils. This usually comprises about a third of the blend, but these parcels are currently being redeveloped. Succulent dark cherry fruit, new leather, licorice, mocha and sweet French oak are pushed forward. Plush contours wrap it all up in style. This is a fine choice for medium-term drinking, once the tannins soften a bit. Tasted two times. 
- Antonio Galloni (04/2026)

A juicy and fruity wine with a lovely center palate of fruit. It’s medium-bodied with polished tannins and a savory finish. Very pretty already. (04/2026)

Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2025 Côte de Baleau pops from the glass with energetic notes of raspberry preserves and red currant jelly, followed by hints of red roses, clove oil, and fallen leaves. The medium- to full-bodied palate has a very firm backbone of grainy tannins with a lively line cutting through the dense, muscular red preserves flavors, finishing long and perfumed. (04/2026)

The 2025 Côte de Baleau offers up notes of minty cherries and red fruit preserve, followed by a medium-bodied, firm, taut palate. Some two hectares of the estate, located on sandy soils, is undergoing replanting, so this year's blend is skewed in favor of the estate's more structured terroirs.
- William Kelley (04/2026)