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Tasting notes
The 2019 Pavie has a very pure and perfumed bouquet with black cherries, kirsch and cassis fruit, controlled and focused. The palate is medium-bodied with grainy tannins, fresh with fine salinity, slightly granular towards the finish that feels cohesive and opulent. In the glass, it begins to show just a bit of alcohol on the finish, prompting me to knock a point off. Tasted blind at the Southwold annual tasting.
Critic scores
Average Score
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate
Neal Martin
More reviews and scores
Tasted blind. Very dark crimson. Zesty and rich at the same time. Thick and sweet and almost exaggerated – but not! Great fruit and tannin. Just a little hot on the end. (JR)
The 2019 Château Pavie is another beauty that offers more density and sexiness than just about every other wine in the vintage, yet it is still an unnecessarily restrained expression of this terroir, which is the fad in Bordeaux these days. Based on 50% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, and 18% Cabernet Sauvignon that was brought up in 80% new French oak, this deep purple-hued effort has a great bouquet of ripe black cherries, darker currants, tobacco leaf, violets, and graphite, with a beautiful sense of minerality and salinity on the palate. Full-bodied, concentrated, and powerful, it has plenty of background oak, a deep, layered mid-palate, terrific tannins, and a great finish. It shows the more understated, elegant style of the vintage yet is still pure Pavie. Hide bottles for 5-7 years and enjoy over the following 30+.
While the 2019 Pavie does display a touch more restraint that the wines produced here a decade ago, it remains one of the most powerful, extracted wines in all of Bordeaux, exhibiting a glass-staining, opaque purple-black color and a rich bouquet of cherries, blackberries and berry fruit liqueur mingled with sweet spices, loamy soil, licorice and rose petals. Full-bodied, powerful and muscular, it's thick and textural, with a layered, multidimensional mid-palate laden with ripe fruit and rich, chewy tannins, concluding with a long, youthfully grippy finish. The evolution of the early Pese-era wines at age 20 leads me to suspect that time will be kind to this 2019, but couldn't this great site—which naturally delivers elevated maturity combined with low pH—be rendered with more charm and sensuality?
About the producer
The slopes of Château Pavie were planted as far back as the fourth century by the Ancient Romans and it has been a well-known producer in Saint-Émilion since the middle of the 19th century.