Limited availability on seven of 2022's potentially perfect wines

Potentially perfect. Tasting en primeur is not easy; you have to project the future performance of an unfinished barrel sample. Most wine critics now prefer to band their scores for en primeur tasting: a range of (say) 90-92 allows for the divergence that can take place as a wine is finished, settles, begins to mature. A score of 98-100 is potentially perfect, and a contender for wine of the vintage. These are among a vintage’s most sought-after wines, and they are often hard to get your hands on; but we are pleased to have been able to pick up a few extra cases of 7 of 2022’s potentially perfect wines.

I have often been in awe of Pichon Lalande and its mixture of charm, structure, and complexity. Mouton-Rothschild is opulent and glamorous; Lafite is tensile, linear, powerful. Pessac’s first growth Haut-Brion is arguably the first of the firsts in terms of longevity and historical influence. It was served to Charles II on the restoration of the English monarchy, and is going strong today: the complexity and vinous architecture of the 2022 are remarkable. St-Julien has no first growths, but if it had just one, that would be Leoville-Las Cases. (Sorry, Ducru-Beaucaillou, but that’s just the way it is). Las Cases is always a monumental wine, but in 2022 it married that monumentality to an exceptional finesse.

It wasn’t just Cabernet that excelled in 2022; Merlot was amazing. It merrily defied the received wisdom that it doesn’t like hot vintages, and instead returned many fresh and lifted wines which married intensity and concentration with lift and vivacity. As a result, there is no shortage of great wines on the right bank. In Pomerol, we were wowed by Vieux Chateau Certan. It is a very desirably sited property, between Petrus and Le Pin. With vines between 20-80 years old (as against the Pomerol average of 30) it lives up to the ‘old’ in its name. It is a wine that is effortless to drink, with a texture like silk, yet intense, complex, and certain to be long-lived. In St-Emilion, Figeac was our top pick. It has been newly lifted to St-Emilion’s premier division, Premier Grand Cru Classé (A). (It probably should have always been there, but never mind). It’s an extremely old property, with roots in the Roman era, and some of the vines are over 100 years old. But it also has a space-age new cellar leading the wine to even greater levels of precision. /NT

Offered subject to remaining unsold; for shipment Spring 2025