Winemaker Notes
The vinification, both modern and traditional of red wines, is carried out by slow and gentle extraction in order to preserve the roundness of the wine and the mineral features of the soil. The tannins are well balanced and silky in harmony with red fruits (blackcurrant, blackberry, cherry) and reveal toasted notes from ageing in the finest quality French oak barrels.
Blend: 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Blackcurrants, raspberries, crushed stone, bark, and dark mushroom. Licorice, too. Full-bodied with chewy tannins that are minerally and intense. Tangy undertone with plenty going on. Very structured. Solid wine from this estate.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From a region that excelled in 2020, the 2020 Château Carbonnieux sports a deep purple hue to go with a killer bouquet of ripe blackcurrants, leafy tobacco, scorched earth, and graphite. It's rich, concentrated, and medium to full-bodied on the palate, with a beautiful mid-palate as well as building, ripe tannins. This stunning effort warrants 3-4 years of bottle age and will evolve for 10-15 years in cold cellars.
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Wine Enthusiast
The Perrin family's wine has a structured character with tannins and crisp black currant fruits offering juicy, bright acidity as well as some fine potential. The wine's richness will develop well.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Decanter
This delivers a lovely streamlined, mineral-edged palate full of blackcurrant, plum and black cherry fruit. It’s quite potent in that you get heat on the mid-palate, suggesting high alcohol which detracts a little form the overall enjoyment and makes this a little severe. But there is nice freshness and summery red berry fruits and herbal accents underneath so give this time.
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Wine Spectator
Solidly built, this seems to soak up the vintage's heat, turning it around in the form of a broad swath of steeped black currant and blackberry paste flavors supported by warm tar and smoldering tobacco. Shows a nice singed cedar frame, with a lingering note of warm paving stone on the finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Best from 2025 through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Carbonnieux has turned out nicely, like its white counterpart, exhibiting aromas of plums, cassis and cherries mingled with hints of pencil shavings. Medium to full-bodied, rich and gourmand, with powdery tannins and a succulent core of fruit, it's an elegant effort from this large Pessac estate.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Recognized for its superior reds as well as whites, Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank claims classified growths for both—making it quite unique in comparison to its neighboring Médoc properties.
Pessac’s Chateau Haut-Brion, the only first growth located outside of the Médoc, is said to have been the first to conceptualize fine red wine in Bordeaux back in the late 1600s. The estate, along with its high-esteemed neighbors, La Mission Haut-Brion, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Pique-Caillou and Chateau Pape-Clément are today all but enveloped by the city of Bordeaux. The rest of the vineyards of Pessac-Léognan are in clearings of heavily forested area or abutting dense suburbs.
Arid sand and gravel on top of clay and limestone make the area unique and conducive to growing Sémillon and Sauvignon blanc as well as the grapes in the usual Left Bank red recipe: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and miniscule percentages of Petit Verdot and Malbec.
The best reds will show great force and finesse with inky blue and black fruit, mushroom, forest, tobacco, iodine and a smooth and intriguing texture.
Its best whites show complexity, longevity and no lack of exotic twists on citrus, tropical and stone fruit with pronounced floral and spice characteristics.