Winemaker Notes
This rich and concentrated wine is packed with spicy black fruits and layers of blueberry flavors, alongside firm tannins that promise good aging potential. The wine's richness offer a full, dense palate with a long, mineral-tinged finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This new cuvée from Belle-Vue is produced on a 2.04-hectare parcel. This 100% Petit Verdot wine comes from old vineyards planted in 1936, 1940 and 1950 whose average age in 2016 was 77 years. It was aged in French oak, 20% new, with 15% of production matured in amphorae. It was aged for a total of 14 months. Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2016 Le Petit Verdot by Belle-Vue opens with provocatively earthy notes emerging on the nose of fertile loam, tar and scorched earth with a red and black currants core plus a hint of wild thyme. Medium to full-bodied with a firm, grainy texture from nicely ripe tannins, it has a great core of expressive fruit and a long mineral-tinged finish.
Rating: 92+ -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Le Petit Verdot by Belle-Vue is also outstanding and has loads of character. It’s also one of the finest expressions of pure Petit Verdot out there, offering an inky purple color, loads of blue fruits, graphite, and charcoal, medium to full body, and tons of rock minerality that shows more on the finish. Made from vines planted in 1936, 1940, and 1950, aged in 20% new oak, this brilliant wine will benefit from a few years of bottle age and keep for 10-15+.
Rating: 91+ -
Wine Enthusiast
Bold and ripe, this rich wine is concentrated and full of spicy black fruits. Produced from a tiny parcel of Petit Verdot that escaped the devastating frost of 1956, it is dark, dense with layers of blueberry flavors alongside the firm tannins. The richness of the wine and its weight promise good aging.
In most of France, wines are named by their place of origin and not by the type of grape (with the exception of Alsace). Just like a red Burgundy is by law, always made of Pinot noir, a red Bordeaux is a blended wine composed mainly of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Depending on the laws of the village from which the grapes come, the conditions of the vintage and decisions of the winemaker, the blend can be further supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot and in rare cases, Carmenere. So popular and repeated has this mix of grape varieties become worldwide, that the term, Bordeaux Blend, refers to a wine blended in this style, regardless of origin.