Winemaker Notes
With its deep, luminous color, Château Ormes de Pez 2024 reveals a refined, fruit-forward bouquet. On the palate, the tannins are silky, lending a smooth texture and perfect balance. This vintage showcases remarkable finesse and suppleness, promising excellent ageing potential.
Blend: 48% Merlot, 41% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Petit Verdot, 5% Cabernet Franc
This wine does not include the blanket 10% tariff imposed in April 2025. When the wines are shippable in fall of 2027, customers will have the option to pay any tariff in place at the time or to keep their wines stored in a temperature-controlled facility free of charge in France.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Deep ruby/plum-hued, the 2024 Château Ormes De Pez offers solid aromatics of smoke red and black fruits, graphite, tobacco, and freshly sharpened pencils. I like its overall texture, it's medium-bodied, has ripe tannins, and solid length on the finish.
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
James Suckling
A very fruity red this year, showing sweet berries on the nose. Medium-bodied with firm tannins. Some hawthorn fruit. This delivers more directness than nuance. Juicy, medium-long finish. 48% merlot, 41% cabernet sauvignon, 6% petit verdot, 5% cabernet franc.
Barrel Sample: 91-92 -
Vinous
The 2024 Ormes de Pez is a very pretty, expressive Saint-Estèphe. Strong floral, savory and earthy elements abound. Bright red-toned fruit, spice, cedar and new leather lend notable punch. This is a very fine vintage for Ormes de Pez. Tasted two times. –Antonio Galloni
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
Decanter
Really fragranced on the nose. Lively and clean, this has a gorgeously smooth texture with plump fruit but a crystalline core of minerality that elongates the wine and gives a salty bite on the finish. A little tension still but this works. Easy to enjoy this, balanced still with a kick of power and minty clove aspect. Nice succulence. Great!! 5% Cabernet Franc completes the blend. Ageing 45% new oak for 16 months in French oak barrels. 3.61pH. Tasted twice.
Barrel Sample: 91
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.