Aromas of wild blackberries, blueberries, dried lavender, cloves and eucalyptus with gravel and cocoa butter. It’s full-bodied with firm, powdery tannins. Polished and creamy with a core of ripe fruit that evolves to herbs, spices and chocolate. Fantastic concentration and seamless integration. Try from 2024.

This wine is a blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot and 4% Cabernet Franc to be aged for approximately 18 months in oak barriques, 60% new. Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2018 Pape Clement is a little closed, slowly unfurling to reveal fragrant earth, crushed rocks, iron ore and tobacco notions over a core of crushed red and black currants plus kirsch, red roses and Ceylon tea. Full-bodied and wonderfully vivacious, it offers a solid line of firm and fine-grained tannins and amazing freshness, finishing very long and mineral laced. - Lisa Perrotti-Brown, April 2019, The Wine Advocate

From Bernard Magrez’s flagship estate, the 2018 Château Pape Clément checks in as a tentative blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc that will spend 18 months in 60% new French oak. This ripe, full-bodied, opulent beauty knocks it out of the park and boasts a saturated purple color to go with a monster bouquet of cassis and blackberry fruits intermixed with notes of smoked earth, graphite, spicy oak, and spring flowers. Possessing ripe, silky tannins (and plenty of them), remarkable purity of fruit, a stacked mid-palate, and a great, great finish, it ranks in the top tier in the vintage, and despite having the fruit to drink nicely in its youth, it’s going to age effortlessly. It might very well be the finest wine from this estate in the past decade or more. Tasted on three separate occasions. - jebdunnuck.com, May 2019

I love watching how Pape Clement is evolving with every vintage. There's still a bit of Venice Beach in its muscles but it has let some juice in between the firm tannins and it's all the better for it. There are ripples of freshness here too, with lots of fleshy fruit, and a slatey mineral finish that sits against chocolate and smoked cedar notes. It's clearly been carefully extracted yet still has the serious ageing ability and sense of confidence that is the signature of the property. 37hl/ha yield in 2018. Two-thirds new oak. - www.decanter.com, Jane Anson, March 2019

Black core, purple rim. Plenty of lively black fruit on the nose, then really thick and chewy on the palate. The alcohol, high generally in this vintage, shows here. Dense, chewy and a bit monolithic. Tough finish at the moment. For lovers of power rather than elegance, though I think it would be too much for the table. - Julia Harding, jancisrobinson.com, April 2019