This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
On the sixth day of Christmas
With no goose-a-laying in sight, db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay continues his list of some of the best wines to gift your true-love with a “simply incredible” suggestion for the sixth day of Christmas.
The wine: Cos d’Estournel 2010
Format: A special issue library release direct from the property in original wooden cases of 3 bottles.
Unique selling point: An incredible wine from an incredible vintage with perfect provenance and a special limited edition original wooden case to demonstrate its late release from the property. The wine is ready to drink today, above all in bottle, but with a least 50 years ahead of it. This is the first release of the 2010 vintage directly from the estate following its initial release en primeur in 2011.
Yours for: Available from Millesima for €872 euros. The wood from which the beautiful case is hand-crafted is from Paulownia, a much more environmentally sustainable source which absorbs ten time more carbon dioxide from the environment than traditional species and releases four times as much oxygen.
Tasting note:
Cos d’Estournel 2010 (St Estèphe; 78% Cabernet Sauvignon; 19% Merlot; 2% Cabernet Franc; 1% Petit Verdot). Simply incredible. This is a wine whose reputation proceeds it. I never tasted this en primeur and so this is the first time I have encountered it. It deserves its legendary status. We could be nowhere else other than St Estèphe and we could be nowhere else other than Cos in St Estèphe. There are only two wines of the appellation capable of producing this kind of power, concentration and volume in the mouth in any vintage. And the style of the two properties is entirely different, above all 2010. This is opulent, rich, plush and plump, full and stylish, with a sleek and suave quality accentuated by the slight austerity of the vintage. But it’s also full of the signature spice and exoticism of Cos and that saline/marine, almost iodine, note that for me is even more of a clue to its identity. Startlingly brilliant. 98.
*while the sixth day is actually 30th December, the db offices will be shut between Christmas and New Year, so publishing in advance should give you time to get organised and stock up!