A transparent and clear young Pauillac with blackcurrant, mushroom, chocolate, and wet earth. Full-bodied, layered and flavorful with fine, velvety tannins. Plenty of graphite and blue fruit at the end. Drink after 2027.

The 2020 Château Grand-Puy Ducasse is a brilliant, powerful, age-worthy Pauillac that will reward bottle age. Blackcurrants, tobacco, cedar pencil, and chocolate are just some of its nuances, and this beauty hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a dense, mouth-filling texture, plenty of ripe tannins, and outstanding length. It's not the most elegant Pauillac out there, but it has quintessential aromatics, structure, and density, and is beautifully done, as well as incredibly satisfying. It will probably take a decade of bottle age to hit maturity, and it should have 30-40 years of overall longevity. Tasted three times.

The 2020 Grand Puy Ducasse is elegant, polished and sophisticated, just as it was en primeur. Dark cherry, mocha, licorice and crushed rose petals are some of the many notes that open up. Medium in body, with terrific energy and tons of class, Grand Puy Ducasse is very pretty and especially refined in 2020.

One of the best vintages of Grand Puy Ducasse ever produced is packed with multiple-layers of ripe, fresh, creamy, salt-infused, blackberries, currants, spearmint, cigar box, cedar and lead pencil. There is volume, balance, freshness, length and a fruit-filled finish that holds your focus. This is a top vintage for Grand Puy Ducasse that will age for 2-3 decades. Drink from 2025-2050. Tasted March 2023

The 2020 Grand Puy Ducasse has finally stepped up a gear since I tasted it from barrel. In bottle, it is undoubtedly very concentrated with copious blackberry and boysenberry fruit, touches of incense and graphite developing with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with grainy tannins, well balanced and with much better backbone than recent vintages; certainly no herbaceousness or underripeness evident. It is quite precise on the finish, completing a very commendable GPD.

Milk chocolate laced black fruits on the nose - smells deep and inviting. Smooth, round and full, clearly powerful and concentrated from the get go. The structure is quite tight, tannins are pronounced and grippy though plush not severe or edgy. They support the very ripe fruit - a sense of heat and high alcohol abounds but it manages to stay just the right side of too much giving a hefty wine with backbone, structure and lots of potential for ageing. Acidity is there underneath but you don't feel it so much above the ripe fruit and firm tannins. A massive and characterful wine here. Drinking Window: 2027 - 2042
Tasted by: Georgina Hindle (at Pomerol, 02 Jan 2023)

If its stablemate Meyney is a real success this year, the 2020 Grand-Puy-Ducasse exhibits a firmer, more extracted profile. Offering up attractive aromas of cherries, cassis, pencil shavings and violets, it's medium to full-bodied, framed by chalky tannins that assert themselves on the chewy finish.

55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot. Cask sample.
Fruity and fulsome on the nose with dark-fruit notes and a dash of (quality) oak. Round and generous on attack then drives on through the palate. At a stage of prise de bois so drying finish but the oak should integrate in time. Dense rather than complex. (JL)