2020 La Vieille Cure
Estimated value
Buying options
Tasting notes
Deep in color, the wine kicks off with a strong dose of oak before you find all of its chocolate coated black cherries, licorice, spice and smoke. Sexy and silky, the wine coats your palate with crushed rocks, dark red pit fruits and layers of chocolate. Give this a year or two for the oak to better integrate and this should be good to go. Drink from 2024-2038.
Critic scores
Average Score
James Suckling
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
An outstanding wine, the 2020 Château La Vieille Croix offers up lots of red and black fruits as well as textbook Right Bank tobacco, earth, and chocolate-driven aromatics. Coming from vines near Château Fontenil, it's medium to full-bodied, has terrific tannins, and is just a balanced, elegant, satisfying Fronsac to drink over the coming decade.
The 2020 La Vieille Cure offers ripe blueberry and cassis scents on the nose, a little opaque and perhaps just lacking the complexity of the top performing Fronsacs. The palate is medium-bodied with a creamy entry, slightly lower acidity than its peers with a hard, obdurate finish. Just trying a bit too hard to impress. Tasted twice with consistent notes.
The 2020 La Vieille Cure is fabulous. Rich and sumptuous in the glass, the 2020 offers up a heady mélange of black cherry, mocha, licorice, plum, incense and chocolate. There's gorgeous depth and texture here. The 2020 is a superb Vieille Cure.