2020 Malescot St Exupery
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Tasting notes
Malescot Saint-Exupéry is a top wine, exuding Margaux’s finer qualities in 2020. The wine has excellent-quality, spicy oak notes, brilliantly entwined with lifted, floral tones. It is what you hope to find in Margaux, but don’t always get. The tannins are fully resolved, bringing lovely finesse, elegance and silkiness to the palate. The fruit is pristine and deep, dominated by fresh blackcurrant. There is a very balanced interplay of floral and fruit notes, plus the flattering oak. There is an enjoyable bitterness to the finish. Excellent.
Critic scores
Average Score
James Suckling
Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
Tasted blind. Black core with crimson rim. Black-fruited, intense, ripe cassis. Tighter and more elegant on the palate, tannins dry and fine, elegant rather than powerful. (JH)
The 2020 Malescot Saint-Exupéry is oaky on the nose. At the moment, the wood occludes the fruit profile, but it will assimilate with time, and there is satisfying delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with a sweeter entry than its peers, perhaps due to more extraction or later picking. It retains decent freshness, although it just needs to muster a little more restraint and grace, which may well develop with bottle age. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.
Beautiful cassis, smoky oak, graphite, blackberries, and scorched earth notes emerge from the 2020 Château Malescot Saint Exupéry, another incredibly impressive wine from Margaux in the vintage. With medium to full-bodied richness, it has plenty of mid-palate depth, the building, firmer tannins of the vintage, fabulous purity of fruit, and a great finish. Hide bottles for 4-5 years and enjoy over the following 15-20 years.