2020 Clos Manou

The 2020 Clos Manou Cuvée 1850 is aged entirely in oak, 50% new and 50% one-year-old. It has a fragrant bouquet, floral in style, with pressed rose petals and salted licorice. Unfolds with bilberry and blackcurrant traces. The palate is well balanced with edgy tannins, very sapid in the mouth…this really gets the saliva flowing. There are hints of freshly rolled tobacco, black pepper and pencil shavings toward the finish.

If you are a fan of the main Clos Manou wine, I strongly suggest that you seek out this unusual cuvée, made in tiny quantities (900 bottles in this vintage), from ungrafted pre-Phylloxera vines dating back to around 1850, making them somewhere close to 170 years old. Largely Merlot, with a small amount of as-yet unidentified grapes that may include Cabernet Sauvignon, it's one of the great unknown wines of Bordeaux, concentrated, understated and pleasantly rustic yet full of complexity and subtle, earthy, sinewy tannins. There are fruits here, majoring on a well-paced unfurling of bilberry and blackberry, but they are laced with underbrush, soy, liqourice root, and a slow-release oyster shell salinity on the finish. Well-constructed, it will take its time to reach full drinking window, but could be enjoyed now with a good carafe, as there is an immediacy to its appeal that speaks to the unknowable impact of truly old vines. Aged in 50% new oak barrels and 50% one year old, unfined, and only lightly filtered, bottled under azote. A magical wine from owner Stéphane Dief.

Medium-bodied with a chewy tannin structure and blackcurrant and graphite character. The texture ends polished and focused. Very structured.