Appellations

Valandraud 2018

St Emilion, Grand Cru

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Tasting Notes

The 2018 Valandraud packs a punch on the nose, delivering a complex array of scents: blackberry, raspberry, freshly picked violets and a touch of mint. The oak is beautifully integrated. The palate is medium-bodied with saturated tannins and commingled blue and blackberry fruit. Sweet and candied toward the finish, which has an almost Burgundian texture. Somehow quite Asian in style, with touches of hoisin on the aftertaste, this is a very classy and completely delicious Valandraud.

Score: 95 Neal Martin, Vinous.com Maturity: 2025 - 2050 Date: 23 August 2021

The 2018 Valandraud was picked "un peu tard" according to Jean-Luc Thunevin. It has a gorgeous, very pure and intense bouquet with black cherries, cassis and raspberry coulis fruit, floral scents that emerge with time. The palate is silky smooth with beautifully integrated new oak, a fine bead of acidity thanks to the cold clayey soils and northerly exposure. The finish is opulent but very controlled and persistent. If you love Valandraud, you will hold this up as one of the best Jean-Luc Thunevin has crafted.

Score: 94 - 96 Neal Martin, Vinous.com Maturity: 2025-2050 Date: 01 November 2019

Another head-turning wine from Jean-Luc is his 2018 Château Valandraud, which is mostly Merlot blended with small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Its dense purple hue is followed by an incredible array of smoky black and blue fruits supported by notes of tobacco leaf, white chocolate, candied orange, and spice. This beauty has a deep, rich, powerful style yet holds onto a beautiful sense of purity and freshness, possessing ripe yet present tannins, plenty of textbook Saint-Emilion minerality, flawless balance, and a gorgeous finish. It reminds me of a slightly more approachable, elegant version of the 2016. Either way, it's rock star stuff. It can be drunk today with pleasure yet deserves 4-6 years of bottle age and will keep for 20-25+.

Score: 98 Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com Maturity: 2025 - 2050 Date: 22 July 2021

Another great vintage for Jean-Luc Thunevin’s flagship wine, the 2018 Château Valandraud sports a glass-staining purple color as well as a mammoth-sized personality in its blue and black fruits, liquid violets, and graphite aromas and flavors. Possessing incredible depth and richness, full body, sweet tannins, and a finish that won’t quit, it’s one of the most hedonistic wines in the vintage, yet also possesses purity, balance, and elegance. It’s a thrilling, blockbuster to drink over the coming two decades or more.

Score: 96 - 98 Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com Date: 01 May 2019

Deep purple-black in color, the 2018 Valandraud is still sporting a fair bit of oak on the nose, with the cedary notions giving way to a profound core of Black Forest cake, stewed plums and boysenberry preserves, plus suggestions of espresso, clove oil, unsmoked cigars and charcuterie with a waft of Chinese five spice. The full-bodied palate is jam-packed with rich black fruit preserves, framed by sturdy tannins and just enough freshness, finishing long and tinged with exotic spices. It will need a good 5-6 years for everything to marry and for the nuances to be fully expressed, then enjoy it over the next 25+ years.

Score: 96 Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate, RobertParker.com Maturity: 2026 - 2051 Date: 18 July 2021

Deep purple-black in color, the 2018 Valandraud develops slowly from a base of warm black cherries, blackberry compote and preserved plums with a perfume of sandalwood, Indian spices, lavender, wilted roses, mocha and fruitcake plus wafts of woodsmoke and camphor. Full-bodied, the palate is rich, ripe and flamboyant with tons of opulent black and blue fruit layers, wonderfully curtailed by a firm frame of velvety tannins and fantastic freshness, finishing very long and very seductive.

Score: 95 - 97 Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate, RobertParker.com Date: 23 April 2019

Rich, deep, powerful and hugely persistent, this has tons of juicy black fruits but clearly in the more restrained frame that owner Jean Luc Thunevin has introduced over the past few vintages. It's a brilliant wine, full of personality, keeping its concentration and glamour and just easing towards balance, but still with its signature insouciance. Tasted several times and always delicious, this just pips the excellent 2016 for me. 3% Malbec completes the blend, the first time it's been included in the wine. 40hl/ha yield. 3.6pH. 100% new oak for extended ageing.

Score: 96 Jane Anson, Decanter.com Maturity: 2027-2042 Date: 15 April 2019

This is a fantastic young Bordeaux with superb depth of fruit and complex tannin structure. Hints of smoke, spice and toasted oak. Full body and firm, dusty tannins. Very long finish.

Score: 97 - 98 James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com Date: 11 April 2019

The 2018 Valandraud is magnificent. Unctuous and super-concentrated on the palate, the 2018 possesses off the charts richness. Crème de cassis, bittersweet chocolate, hard candy, lavender, menthol, licorice, mint and dark spice all meld together. The 2018 is quite shut down at this stage, which is probably a good thing for its long term prospects. The blend is 90% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 3% Malbec. This is the first time since the early 1990s that Malbec has appeared in the blend. Yields came in at 48 hectoliters per hectare, a touch above the 45 or so that is more customary here.

Score: 94 - 97 Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com Date: 01 April 2019

This is richly fruited, with waves of fleshy raspberry, boysenberry and red currant cruising through, inlaid with singed vanilla and apple wood notes along the way. Shows density and cut through the finish, with a tug of tobacco at the end. This is dialed up to 11.

Score: 96 - 99 James Molesworth, Wine Spectator Date: 28 March 2019