The 2022 Alcée was picked at 22hL/ha between 14 and 22 September without Cabernet Franc in the blend. Now, the limestone terroir comes through brilliantly here - you can just smell that rock percolating through the black fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with a saline entry, fresh and very well balanced, certainly one of the more intellectual Right Bank wines in this vintage. Perhaps not a wine destined to garner mass appeal, instead, a 2022 for ""Castillon diehards".

Tasting like a Grand Cru Classé from Saint-Emilion, the 2022 Château Alcée hails from the cooler Castillon region on the Right Bank and is 100% Merlot aged in one-third new French oak. This beauty offers a vivid purple hue as well as a beautiful perfume of black raspberries, cassis, graphite, and toasted spices. With a real sense of minerality, medium to full body, ripe tannins, and a great finish, it's one of those wines that tastes like it costs three times the price.

Dark berries with blackberry and brambleberry character, as well as dusty tannins. Crunchy. Medium body. Fine tannins. Salty. Pure merlot.

The tannins here are very present from the first moment, you feel their power but they are tempered by a juicy, vertical feel through the palate, and a ton of concentrated black cherry and damson fruit. 25% new oak for ageing alongside larger 400l oak casks. Tasted twice, good quality and one to look out for. No Cabernet Franc in the blend this year becuse they are young vines and they suffered in the drought, with an overall yield of just 22hl/h yield. 3ha estate owned by Nicolas Thienpont since 2011, Nicolas and Cyrile Thienpont winemakers, Julien Lavenu consultant.

The 2022 Alcée is fabulous. Bright, racy and beautifully perfumed, the 2022 is impressive. Red cherry fruit, blood orange, mint, cinnamon, mocha and a touch of sweet oak build effortlessly. Readers will find a sumptuous, plummy red that will drink beautifully out of the gate. Notable. In 2022 the blend is 100% Merlot, as the young vines of Cabernet Franc struggled through the heat and drought. Tasted three times.

Thrilling notes of crème de cassis, violet, and blueberry introduce the 2022 Alcée, a medium to full-bodied, fleshy and supple wine that's firm and youthfully tannic on the finish. It will likely blossom with élevage.