Tasting Notes and Scores
Possibly the wine of the vintage, the 2008 Pavie has the elegance of the Pavie Decesse and the power of the Mondotte. It’s a brilliant, sexy beauty loaded with notions of crème de cassis, blackberries, spice box, and licorice, with a classic Saint-Emilion-like liquid rock minerality. This all carries to a full-bodied Saint-Emilion that offers loads of fruit and texture, yet remains fabulous polished, elegant, and balanced. It’s a wine that builds incrementally on the palate, with beautiful depth of fruit and ripe tannins. Bravo to Gerard Perse for another tour de force in Bordeaux! Drink it any time over the coming 30 years or more. The blend of the 2008 is 70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon.
Jeb Dunnuck
Luscious and sexy, rich and powerful, long and fresh, this has a lot going on. Full bodied and intense, the wine is still young, but it is impossible not to get all the sweetness and purity in the fruits, along with its minerality. But you need to wait another decade. Tasted Sept 2018
Jeff Leve
The 2008 Pavie is deep garnet with a touch of brick. It is a tad shy to begin, needing a bit of shaking to wake up an impressive perfume of black cherry compote, plum preserves, and wild blueberries followed by hints of lilacs, cedar chest, and tar. The full-bodied palate is rich and plush, with a lively backbone to offset the concentrated black fruit layers, finishing long and perfumed. An impressive 2008 that still has a good 30 years+ of life ahead! Lisa perrotti-Brown Dec 2023 - The Wine Independent
Tim Atkin MW
Lots of fruit and fruity and long with amazing truffles and earth and fruity with full and velvety tannins. Long, long finish. Balanced for the vintage, but very rich.
James Suckling
(70% merlot, 20% cabernet franc and 10% cabernet sauvignon): Saturated deep ruby. Sexy, nuanced nose combines black raspberry, graphite, mocha and flowers. Thick, sweet and powerfully concentrated; wonderfully rich, broad, seamless wine with fruit of steel. Flavors of kirsch, licorice and minerals saturate every square millimeter of the mouth. Huge, broad tannins will carry this outsized wine through at least a couple decades of life in bottle.(70% merlot, 20% cabernet franc and 10% cabernet sauvignon): Saturated deep ruby. Sexy, nuanced nose combines black raspberry, graphite, mocha and flowers. Thick, sweet and powerfully concentrated; wonderfully rich, broad, seamless wine with fruit of steel. Flavors of kirsch, licorice and minerals saturate every square millimeter of the mouth. Huge, broad tannins will carry this outsized wine through at least a couple decades of life in bottle.
Wine Independent
Quality 910 | Brand 965 | Economics 970 |
buzz brand, investment staple
Quality: Above the average quality score of its peer group for the 2008 vintage, 814
Brand: We found this wine on 20 of the world's top restaurant wine lists, including Helene Darroze at the Connaught
Economics: Above its peer group average price of £104 for the 2008 vintage
Production: Higher production than its peer group average of 46,409 bottles
- www.wine-lister.com June 2017
Wine Lister
A slightly more compact style of Pavie in this vintage, but still full-bodied, the 2008 has a youthful, dense purple color and is seriously endowed with concentrated, rich fruit, licorice, graphite, forest floor, and loads of dark plum and black and red currant fruit. This wine still has some tannins to resolve, and should be cellared for another 4-5 years. Drink over the following two decades. Drink: 2019 - 2040.
Robert Parker (Wine Advocate #220, Aug 2015)
Wine Advocate
A very solid effort in a difficult year, showing light bay and tobacco notes out front, quickly followed by a mix of raspberry and red and black currant fruit. Shows a lightly chewy edge, along with more tobacco and bittersweet cocoa elements, on the finish. This pulls about all it can out of a wet and cool year.—Non-blind Pavie vertical (March 2017). JM
Wine Spectator
Pavie is all about digging in for the long haul, and at 10 years old it starts to make sense. Those tannins are still chewy but not ferocious, the fruit savoury and concentrated. It has far more power than a typical limestone St-Émilion for at least four of its five beats, until that salted almond taste kicks in on the finish and the slate wall appears before you and you start to ascend, and then you think, hang on, in another 10 years this might just be reaching its peak! (NB: Pavie was upgraded to '1er Grand Cru Classé A' status in 2012). Drinking Window: 2022 - 2038
Tasted by: Jane Anson (at BI, London, 01 Jan 2018)
Part of How Bordeaux 2008 wines taste now: 70 top names rated
Decanter
(14.5% alcohol; 3.34 pH): Opaque ruby-red. Aromatic nose of ripe black cherry, strawberry syrup, incense, smoke and cedar. Sweet and creamy on entry, then fresher and livelier in the middle, with mineral-driven flavors of red cherry and raspberry jam. The high but harmonious acidity gives this wine good clarity and cut and makes it seem lighter than it is. Finishes extremely long, with a bright mineral tang and a savory note. This is excellent already, but really needs another 6 to 8 years to enter its prime and will be at its peak for another 20 after that. Yet another great, classic Bordeaux from the unheralded 2008 vintage. Ian D'Agata
Antonio Galloni
The 2008 Pavie has a sweet, candied bouquet with high-toned, glossy black cherry and crème de cassis fruit that rather betrays the exceptional terroir. The palate is very ripe and concentrated with intense black fruit, almost viscous in texture with a concentrated finish that just feels more like winemaking intent than terroir for me. I think Gérard Perse and his team are crafting far better Pavies today. (Tasted at BI Wine & Spirits annual 10-Year On tasting.)
– vinous.com, 2018
Neal Martin
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