Wow. What a second wine with berries, chocolate, and coffee beans. Black berries. Full and layered with such incredible length and intensity. The real deal. Hard not to drink now but will age beautifully. Try after 2029.

Based on 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2020 La Gravette De Certan offers lots of ripe black cherries, tobacco, leafy herbs, chocolate, and damp earth. Medium to full-bodied, ripe, seamless, and straight-up sexy, it's perfect for drinking over the coming 15 years. If there's a better second wine out there, I don't know of it. Maturity 2023-2038.

The 2020 Gravette de Certan is quite unusual this year in that the blend includes 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, which gives the Gravette a distinctly Left Bank-leaning profile of cassis, graphite, lavender and dried herbs. Pliant and creamy, with notable depth, the Gravette is fabulous, even if it is unlike any Gravette I have tasted before. It’s a stunning, very serious wine that is frankly better than many Grand Vins. A very pretty, exotic, blood orange-like note brightness the finish beautifully. The 2020 is an insanely great Gravette. Drinking Window 2028-2040.

Medium-bodied, fresh, vibrant and silky, the wine offers an array of sweet, silky, plums and cherries with a touch of cocoa and bright red pit fruits to come in at the end. You can enjoy this with pleasure while waiting for the Grand Vin to develop. Even better than the 2018, this is a superb vintage of La Gravette de Certan. Drink from 2023-2035.

Inky plum colour, with tight tannins that really need time to open, great structure, with conentrated cassis and bilberry fruits. Right now this is structure rather than flesh, a serious Gravette that needs another three to four years in bottle, but huge potential for a finessed take on Pomerol 2020. 30hl/h yield, 50% new oak.

The 2020 La Gravette de Certan has a lot of oak on the nose that occludes the fruit, coming through in the form of mocha and espresso notes. It's quite Rhône-like in style, with maybe a touch of Brett? The palate is medium-bodied with rustic tannins and fine acidity, although I discern a slight bitterness on the finish that will probably disappear with bottle age. It's a bit hard at the moment, even though this is a Deuxième Vin, so give it two or three years. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting. Drinking Window 2026-2034.

Tasted blind. Black core. Really sweet-fruited aroma with vanilla sweetness and a touch of leafy freshness. Less sweet on the palate but relatively oaky and charry, the tannins dense but tapering to more finesse on the finish. Fresh aftertaste. When to drink 2028-2035.

Julia Harding MW, January 2024