2014 Barde-Haut, St-Emilion

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RW

Ryan Woodhouse

Ryan Woodhouse

Dark red fruit mingles with dried mushroom, sage and saddle leather. Quite a brooding wine with a core of sweet fruit but plenty of savory umami qualities to boot. Exotic spicy oak adds another dimension and helps reinforce structure. Beautiful fine, chalky tannin gives length and promise for a long future (if you don't drink it tonight).

Notes

Those who have been around K&L for a bit know some about Hélène Garcin-Lévèque's elegant wines and her modern, clean style. Together with her husband Patrice, she runs several properties in Bordeaux and also an Argentinian winery, the famed Bodega Poesia. Barde-Haut is one of their top properties, acquired several decades ago by her mother Sylvaine Garcin. Since then it has seen quite a bit of investment from the family, and Patrice now makes the wines himself. A dedicated winemaker, he rarely leaves the vineyards, so Hélène is more the public face of Château Barde-Haut. The 2014 vintage was a good one; the wines are more classic than the opulent 2015s, and far better than the hit-and-mostly-miss 2013s. With the classic structure of 2014, this wine has a long life in front of it, so you’ll want to decant it about an hour before tasting. It is sumptuous, rich, elegant and intense with loads of blueberry and cassis both on the nose and palate. The tannins are still firm, but the edge has rounded out nicely so it’s already in fine shape for your Friday night steak.