Winemaker Notes
Blend: 75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Dense tannins and rich black fruits mark this ripe wine that was organically grown. Its tannins are cushioned by the concentrated but generous black fruits giving the wine great purity as well as structure. Drink from 2024.
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James Suckling
LVC made the grade this year with blackberry, mineral and spice aromas and flavors. Walnut skin too. Full body, integrated tannins. Long and beautiful. Barrel Sample: 92-93 Points
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Jeb Dunnuck
A year in, year out value, the 2015 La Vieille Cure might just be the best yet. This full-bodied, opulent, incredibly sexy 2015 gives up loads of black currants, tobacco, Asian spices, and earth-like aromas and flavors. With low acidity, a mouth-filling, dense, sumptuous texture, and sweet tannin, it’s a downright old-world fruit bomb that’s a joy to drink. Buy a case and drink bottles over the coming decade or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 La Vieille Cure has a clean and precise bouquet: black cherries, wild strawberry and subtle floral scents emerging from the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with succulent and fleshy tannin. There is impressive weight here. It is very smooth in texture with a figgy, cedary finish that needs to develop just a little more freshness during its barrel maturation. Still, this Fronsac has good potential and I expect it to settle comfortably at the top of my banded score, once in bottle. Barrel Sample: 90-92 Points
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Wine Spectator
This has a juicy core of dark currant, plum and bitter cherry fruit lined with streaks of charcoal and singed iron. A tobacco leaf note wafts through the finish, which has persistent but integrated toast. Solid grip. Best from 2019 through 2029.
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Decanter
Rich, round and full flavoured with spice and dark fruit notes. A lovely mid-palate; tannins well rounded. Seductive wine that will be accessible early. Barrel Sample.
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.
Home of the very first remarkable Right Bank wines, dating back to the 1730s, Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac actually retained more fame than Pomerol well into the 19th century. Today these wines represent some of Bordeaux’s best hidden gems.
Fronsac is a very small region at an unusually high elevation compared to other Bordeaux appellations. Its vineyards unroll along the oak-dotted hills bordering the river’s edge, making it perhaps Bordeaux’s prettiest and most majestic countryside.
Merlot covers 60% of the vineyard acreage; the rest of the vines are Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac appellations are limited to the higher land where soils are predominantly limestone and sandstone. Lower vineyards along the Dordogne River mainly qualify for Bordeaux AOC status
The best Fronsac are deeply concentrated in ripe red and black berry; they have a solid mineral backbone and are rich and plush on the finish.