The 2022 Grand Village (Lafleur)comes from more clay and limestone soils and is 80% Merlot (half of the Merlot is a massale selection from Lafleur) and 10% Bouschet. This beauty is medium to full-bodied and has incredible purity in its ripe red and blue fruits as well as notes of graphite, chocolate, violets, and damp earth. It reminds me of a great Pomerol and brings plenty of richness and depth while staying balanced and finesse-driven.

Beautiful blue fruit and chocolate here. Medium- to full-bodied. The tannins are firm and velvety with lots of spice, seashell and iodine notes. Lots of white pepper and sea salt. Fresh. 80% merlot and 20% cabernet franc.

Baptiste Guinaudeau and his team have produced a beautifully pure, perfumed 2022 Grand Village that bursts with aromas of licorice, graphite, blackberries, pencil shaving, iris and fresh mint. Medium to full-bodied, seamless and fleshy, this outstanding wine is perfectly balanced on the palate with velvety tannins and a bright, saline finish. This is one of the very best Grand Villages produced to date, and it benefits from the sort of careful winemaking normally reserved for cru classé wines. It’s a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, although for the latter grape the Guinaudeau family prefers the local name of Bouchet.

Nutty, spicy, floral, and fruity in the nose, the wine is ripe, round, lush, rich and fragrant in the mouth. The finish is long, lifted, and spicy, with layers of dark pit fruits, cocoa and a touch of salt on the back end of the finish. This is one of the great Bordeaux value wines you can purchase by the case, if you can find it. And it is ready to be enjoyed on release! The wine blends 80% Merlot with 20% Cabernet Franc. Harvesting took place September 9 - September 23. Drink from 2025-2037. Tasted en primeur May 2023

The 2022 Grand Village is a powerful, brooding wine. Swaths of tannin wrap around a core of black fruit, gravel, incense, licorice and chocolate in a potent Grand Village that overdelivers. The 2022 is a wine of notable substance and breadth. I wouldn’t dream of opening a bottle for at least a few years. The 2022 is the most intense young Grand Village I have ever tasted. There is serious potential here.

Always a name to look out for, this manages to achieve a nuanced, juicy feel amid the extreme conditions of the year, and you'll find an enjoyable delivery of plump raspberry and red cherry fruits, held in by austere tannins. Density builds through the palate, and this is a value pick. 30% new oak, 40% one year old, 30% two year old barrels. After a number of years of replantings, all Cabernet Franc here is massal selection from Lafleur, and half of the Merlot also massal from old Merlots from Lafleur. Harvest September 3 to 23.

The 2022 Grand Village, aged in 30% new oak, has a briny, estuarine nose with dark berry fruit and light floral scents (iris flower). The palate is medium-bodied with a peppery opening. Nicely structured, hints of black olive and black pepper emerge with time. The finish is mineral and slightly grippy yet also balanced, off-dry and slightly granular. Give it a couple of years in bottle because this is seriously good, cut from a much finer cloth than vintages a decade ago.