Winemaker Notes
Blend: 50% Merlot, 41% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
The estate is under the same ownership as Chateau Lynch-Bages in Pauillac. Rich and smoky, this sophisticated, rich wine has some serious tannins as well as black fruits. The wine shows great pedigree, with dark berry fruits and a firm, ageworthy structure. Drink from 2026.
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Decanter
Beautiful aromatics, this is thoroughly enjoyable with brambles and hawthorn that give focus and lift. 45% new oak. Brilliant value, as ever. Drinking Window 2023 - 2036
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James Suckling
This shows lots of spice, such as cloves and nutmeg, together with dark berries and cherries and some plums. It’s structured and relatively dense, with lovely length and beauty. Needs time to open and come together. 50% merlot, 40% cabernet sauvignon with cabernet franc and petit verdot. Lovely now.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh and racy, with a stream of violet and cassis flavors that is tightly focused. Pure, offering a minerally echo. Textbook.
Barrel Sample: 90-93 -
Jeb Dunnuck
Emerging from the team at Lynch-Bages, the 2018 Château Ormes De Pez checks in as 50% Merlot, 41% Cabernet Sauvignon, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, all brought up in just 45% new French oak. Lots of perfumed blue fruits, leafy tobacco, cedar, and spring flowers emerge from the glass, and it has a rocking core of sweet fruit balanced by ripe tannin's and nicely integrated acidity. This fresh, lively, perfumed Saint-Estèphe is going to benefit from 3-5 years of bottle age and cruise for 20-25+ in cold cellars.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A blend of 50% Merlot, 41% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot, aged in 45% new barriques, the deep garnet-purple colored 2018 Ormes de Pez comes tearing out of the glass with rambunctious notes of stewed black cherries, crème de cassis and raspberry pie, plus hints of Indian spices, dried Provence herbs and potpourri with a waft of wood smoke. The full-bodied palate is decadently spicy with bags of black fruit preserves and a velvety texture, finishing long with lovely freshness.
Chateau Ormes de Pez has very homogenous soil (a clay gravel mixture typical of Saint-Estephe) and many of the vines are quite old. The grapes are hand-picked. After selecting the vats and blending, the wine is aged in oak barrels for 15 months in a magnificent cellar overlooking the courtyard.
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.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.