There is great consistency to the wines of Fronsac in 2022. The wines showed great colour, plenty of fruit, good structure, nicely handled extraction and ripe tannins at the Grand Cercle event back in April. As a bunch, they were very impressive. I find this appellation really intriguing and it certainly offers value in this vintage for the quality. The picks? Château Dalem, Château de la Dauphine, Château de la Rivière, Château Fontenil and Château La Vieille Cure are all seriously impressive and worth seeking out. This will be a vintage that will age well in bottle but should offer lots of drinking pleasure early on.

Fronsac has made stylish, powerful Bordeaux in 2019. The quality of this appellation is always high and the top properties here have made a thrilling set of wines. Château Dalem is super serious. It is full of plum and blackcurrant fruit and is inky and substantial. Château de la Dauphine is more obviously lush and glossy. The fruit tones are beautiful and the tannins silky. Château La Vieille Cure is really impressive as usual. With its characteristic spicy Cabernet influenced aromatics, it displays great purity and freshness, but also concentration and intensity. Behind these qualitatively, but still providing much joy, are Château de la Rivière and Château Villars. Both are pretty bold, jam-packed with fruit and extract, and have evidently succeeded in the vintage.

It is always a joy tasting through a range of wines that Jean-Luc Thunevin is involved with. The famous iconoclast of St Emilion has a hand in a large range of properties on both the right and left bank in Bordeaux as a consultant. His flagship wine is his own Château Valandraud and evidently Thunevin has pulled out all the stops again in 2019. This is powerful St Emilion with wonderfully lush fruit tones and extract that is simply knockout. This year I was also struck by his juicy Clos Badon which was looks fruit packed and joyful. The white Valandraud is also worth a special mention. This is usually a remarkably intense and concentrated white. It is once again bold and weighty in 2019 and also has good zap and energy.

Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac look good in 2017. The wines are nicely balanced, with plenty of flesh and harmony. They should age well in the medium term but will be easy to appreciate in their infancy. All in all, this is an interesting vintage for the consumer. Obviously 2015 and 2016 were excellent vintages here, with greater richness and structure, but I was genuinely surprised by the appeal of the wines in 2017. Yes, there has been a reduction in volume due to frost but I didn’t get any sense that quality had been dramatically affected. Quite the opposite. I was especially impressed with Château Dalem, Château de Carles, Château de la Dauphine, Château de la Rivière, Château Moulin Haut Laroque, Château La Vieille Cure and Château Villars. That said, quality seemed pretty homogenous to me and there really weren’t any misfires in the other wines I tasted from Fronsac or Canon-Fronsac earlier this year.