Winemaker Notes
With its deep garnet color, Château Ormes de Pez 2021 offers fresh cherry and black fruit aromas with big, well-rounded tannins and a lingering freshness. This 2021 is in line with recent vintages with a harmoniously balanced blend of Cabernet and Merlot.
Blend: 49% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Medium-bodied with a firm tannin frame and pretty notes of pencil lead, blackberries and some walnuts. Hints of chocolate orange, too. Structured and a little chewy, with perfumed character. Juicy. 49% merlot, 40% cabernet sauvignon, 6% cabernet franc and 5% petit verdot.
Barrel Sample: 92-93
-
Wine Enthusiast
Ripe black-currant aromas and a smoky edge from tannins are lifted onto the wine’s nutmeg spice and toast. They go along with the dense black fruits that are powerful and structured.
-
Decanter
Sweet strawberry, orange, grapefruit, plums and blackcurrants, but the sweet jammy kind. This is fruit forward and expressive out the gate, round and so appealing. Spiced aspects from the Petit Verdot with a sturdy backbone in terms of structure and frame. Tannins are more on the austere side, fine and detailed, extremely mouthfilling but you can almost taste each one with the minerality coming through strongly leaving that clean wet stone taste in the mouth. Ripe and juicy dark fruit also. This is medium bodied with lots of precision in terms of detail. Lovely potential here. 5% Petit Verdot completes the blend. 3.68pH.
Barrel Sample: 91 -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2021 Château Ormes De Pez is another charming, forward, undeniably delicious Saint-Estephe in the vintage. Slightly more red-fruited, it has ample currant fruit as well as some spicy, herbal nuances. These all carry to a medium-bodied, balanced, nicely textured 2021 with ripe tannins and integrated acidity. Give it 2-4 years and enjoy over the following decade or so.
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.