Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
The 2025 Ormes de Pez was picked 9 to 22 September and matured in 20% new oak barrels. This is very refined on the nose with brambly black fruit, crushed stone and light humidor scents, focused and classically styled. The palate is medium-bodied with sapid black fruit, armed with a fine bead of acidity. Black merges into redder fruit towards the finish with commendable length. This Saint-Estèphe has a newfound fluidity which has taken it up a level. Superb. –Neal Martin
Barrel Sample: -
James Suckling
A medium-bodied red with fine tannins and plenty of spice and fruit, with a real sense of St.-Estephe. Juicy and long. Delicious already for barrel. A blend of 58% merlot, 35% cabernet sauvignon, 4% cabernet franc and 3% petit verdot.
Barrel Sample: 94-95 -
Jeb Dunnuck
A Merlot-heavy blend of 58% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Petit Verdot that's resting in 20% new oak, the 2025 Château Ormes De Pez is a little gem of a wine that should be snatched up by readers. Ripe currants, plums, smoky tobacco, and chocolate all define the aromatics, and it's medium to full-bodied on the palate, round, supple, and charming, with ample mid-palate volume and length.
Barrel Sample: 92-94 -
Decanter
Lovely fragrance on the nose, so floral and alive, really pronounced aromatics. Brisk acidity makes the first mark, juicy strawberries and raspberries but there’s tension too driving this wine in one straight line. Tight but lovely detail, fine tannins, a firm, salty grip to the finish. A little lean but this will fill out. Liquorice, tobacco, bitter chocolate and flint. 3% Petit Verdot completes the blend.
Barrel Sample: 92 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Revealing elegant oak alongside dark wild berries and mulberries, with spices emerging with aeration, the 2025 Ormes de Pez is medium- to full-bodied, structured and somewhat firm at this stage. It shows good length and notable freshness, while retaining a dense, well-defined profile.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.