2017 Enclos Tourmaline

The flagship 2017 Enclos Tourmaline comes from a tiny, one-hectare parcel of vines (purchased from Château La Patache in 2012) located right across the road from Château Clinet. This is all clay soils and the wine is 100% Merlot brought up in new French oak. As always, this is a blockbuster styled effort that boasts a saturated purple/black color as well as a huge nose of chocolaty black and blue fruits, licorice, graphite, and earth. With full-bodied richness, a ripe, opulent texture, and sweet tannin, it’s a powerhouse from this vintage that mostly produced mid-weight, elegant wines. The vineyard manager and winemaker here is the talented Jérôme Aguirre, who previously worked at Christine Péré-Vergé's vineyards in Pomerol.

Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2017 Enclos Tourmaline (100% Merlot) opens with baked blackberries and black forest cake scents plus underlying spice cake, espresso and preserved plums hints. The medium to full-bodied palate has very firm, grainy tannins and just enough freshness supporting the berry preserves flavors, finishing on a spicy note.

The 2017 Enclos Tourmaline, a recent arrival on the Pomerol scene after its formation by Peter Kwok, has a very ripe and rather ostentatious bouquet, a slight carbonic quality that detracts from the quality. The palate is a little hard on the entry, the start of a compact and dense Pomerol that does not deliver the same degree of panache and sophistication of the previous two vintages that I have rated highly. It is as if this 2017 is desperate to achieve the same level when it would have been better not to try. Tasted two or three times, it was a wine that needs to manifest more charm and grace by the time it is bottled.