L'Eglise-Clinet 2019

98+ points - Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, April 2022

Unquestionably one of the wines of the vintage on the right bank, the late Denis Durantou's swan-song 2019 L'Eglise Clinet is showing very well indeed in bottle. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of dark berry fruit mingled with notions of raw cocoa, violets, black truffle, orange rind, burning embers and loamy soil, it's full-bodied, layered and concentrated, its velvety attack segueing into a deep, multidimensional core that's framed by ripe, powdery tannins and lively balancing acids. Seamless but youthfully structured, this is a prodigious young Pomerol that will richly reward bottle age.

One of Pomerol's greatest estates, the bulk of L'Eglise Clinet's holdings are located around the winery itself, opposite Château Clinet, complemented by two small parcels, one by the church and another next to the château of La Fleur-Pétrus. The oldest vines date back to 1919, and the late Denis Durantou—whose swan-song vintage the wines reviewed here represent—was a great believer in the importance of high-quality vine genetics and propagating his own massal selections to replant here, as well as his other right bank estates. Vinification is simple but meticulous, with fermentations at relatively low temperature in stainless steel, malolactic fermentation in tank and maturation in some 80% new oak, the vast majority sourced from Tonnellerie Darnajou. The result? Wines that represent the appellation at its best: dominated by Merlot, but concentrated, structured and serious; developing extraordinary complexity with bottle age—the antithesis, in other words, of Pomerol's alter ego, the fleshy fruit-bombs from sandy soils on the periphery of the appellation.