The 2020 Vieux Château Mazerat reveals a vivid purple hue to go with medium to full-bodied aromas and flavors of cassis, blueberries, scorched earth, and graphite. While Maltus’s Le Dôme gets most of the attention, I continue to just love this wine, and it shines in 2020 with both beautiful fruit and ample structure as well as one heck of a great finish. I’m not sure this will match the 2018 or 2019, but we’re certainly in the same ballpark, with the style being much closer to the more elegant 2019.

The 2020 Vieux Château Mazerat is composed of 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc. The Merlot from this single vineyard was picked on September 29th, the Cabernet Franc on October 8th and 9th. The wine has 13.2% alcohol and a pH of 3.58, and it's being aged in French oak barrels, 80% new. Deep garnet-purple colored, it needs a little swirling to reveal notes of black raspberries, Morello cherries and wild blueberries, with an undercurrent of cinnamon toast, lavender and tobacco leaf with a touch of tilled soil. The medium-bodied palate is beautifully refreshing and delicately styled, offering soft-spoken black berry and earthy layers with a soft texture and oodles of freshness, finishing long and minerally.
Drink Date
2025 - 2040
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW

A chewy, focused red with blackberry, blueberry and toasted-oak aromas and flavors. It’s medium-to full-bodied with savory fruit and a flavorful finish.

Aromas of minty blackberries, cassis, licorice and sweet soil tones preface the 2020 Vieux Château Mazerat, a medium to full-bodied, ample and fleshy wine with rich, powdery tannins and a long, saline finish. This has turned out nicely.

The 2020 Vieux Château Mazerat is a bold, savory Saint-Émilion. Blackberry jam, chocolate, dried herbs, sage, mint and licorice all run through it. In 2020, it’s is a bit more nervy than usual. I would be prepared to cellar it for at least a few years. This is an especially taut style for Jonathan Maltus, but it works well.

The 2020 Vieux Château Mazerat offers plenty of ripe black cherry, blueberry and crushed violets, all expressive and beautifully defined. The palate is medium-bodied with sappy black fruit on the entry and firm tannins, and quite saline toward the finish, which just needs to develop a little more delineation. At the moment, the aromatics show better than the palate, though they may change once in bottle. - vinous.com

(90% M, 10% CF; 13.2% ABV)
Dense and closed, but a fresh, mineral-backed black fruit there; rich and vital, finely and firmly tannic; long and linear and with the “seam” of acidity very clear to taste throughout. The attractive “flesh” is tautened by the acidity, making the wine a touch forbidding at the moment, but this is restrained and graceful and with very nice aromatic presence and persistence. 2028–40+.

90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc. A Jonathan Maltus (Le Dôme) wine. Cask sample.
Dark and reticent on the nose. Smooth attack, the tannins abundant and ripe. Then tightens but persists. Again, lots of tension, even a touch strict. Could do with a little more juice. Slightly chewy finish. (JL)