Chateau Cantenac Brown 2018
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
2018 is an unprecedented vintage of great quality, all varietals showing a perfect maturity, mixing concentration, roundness, and balance.
Blend: 69% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Ripe black fruits shine through this balanced wine, showing strongly against a backdrop of rich, generous tannins. This estate is one to watch as it achieves the form the vineyard deserves. Expect this wine to be ready to drink from 2026.
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Wine Spectator
Shows a touch of dark earth out front, with a mix of smoldering tobacco, espresso crema and singed alder notes before the core of warmed plum and blackberry reduction flavors finally starts to unwind. Just a touch burly for a Margaux, but certainly lots to like here and ample range and length. Time will likely add that last bit of refinement. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
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James Suckling
Rich and polished aromas of blueberry, lavender, dark chocolate, hazelnut and sweet tobacco. It’s full-bodied with firm, velvety tannins. Creamy layers of ripe fruit and wood. Long and caressing. Lovely ripe fruit in the center palate. Try from 2024.
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Decanter
This is delicious, silky in texture and filled with luscious black fruits, exotic spiced liquorice and sweet blackberry. Touches of grilled cedar and just a trace of heat appear at the final furlong, along with a hint of menthol. The tannins close their fist around the fruit, reflecting the small berry size in the Cabernets, the percentage of which is slightly up this year as new plantings have come on line. It's an impressive construction, a little less elegant than the 2016 but with a ton of personality and a sense of bursting out of its borders, not yet fully tamed - and hugely appealing as a result. 60% new oak barrels. Drinking Window 2027 - 2042.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Cantenac Brown has a medium to deep garnet-purple color, wafting gently out of the glass with fragrant scents of redcurrant jelly, Morello cherries, plum preserves and fresh blackcurrants, plus suggestions of red roses, cedar chest and pencil lead. The medium-bodied palate (13.5% declared alcohol) has a sturdy frame of grainy tannins and plenty of freshness supporting the delicately styled red and black fruit flavors, finishing savory. Rating: 92+
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Jeb Dunnuck
A classic, elegant Margaux based on roughly 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Merlot (I don't know the exact blend), the 2018 Château Cantenac Brown offers up a pretty perfume of red and black currants, sandalwood, dried flowers, and cedar pencil. It's not the most powerful or concentrated wine in the vintage, yet it has fine tannins as well as a wonderfully balanced, classical style. I suspect it will benefit from just short-term cellaring and keep for 20-25 years.
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The Cantenac Brown soil is typical Medoc gravel. This beautiful, brilliant quartz, formerly called "Medoc diamonds" reflects the sun's rays onto the grapes by day and then releases the heat stored during the day to warm the grapes by night. Cabernets, in particular Cabernet Sauvignons, do well in this soil. They produce fine wines, with an intense bouquet, which are suitable for aging. Merlot, with which they are blended, provides color, richness and smoothness.