Chateau Cantenac Brown 2009

Professional Ratings

• 93 James Suckling
  Wonderful aromas of crushed raspberries, flowers, and hints of vanilla bean. Full body, with silky tannins and a juicy finish. Fresh and minerally. Best in 2018.
• 93 Wine Enthusiast
  Firmly structured, dark-fruited wine, very solid and dense. It has weight along with black currant fruits and acidity. It's a wine that is rich but seriously structured for aging.
• 92 Wine Spectator
  This is perfumy and very pure, with lovely lilac and blackberry aromas followed by plum, cassis and black cherry fruit. The supple finish is caressed with toast that leaves a lingering, perfumy feel. Best from 2013 through 2023.
• 90 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  Tasted twice in Bordeaux, I must say that whatever was shown to me in cask certainly did not appear to be performing as well from bottle. It could be just that the wine has closed down, but I had thought this was an extraordinary wine and one of the big time sleepers of the vintage. The tannins have taken hold, and although the wine is still outstanding, any hopes of achieving a mid-90 point score, as I had hoped, seem highly questionable. Dense ruby/purple with notes of graphite, blackberries and forest floor, the wine is full-bodied, powerful, excruciatingly tannic and closed, and that may be why it’s not showing as well as I predicted. Certainly, this was the biggest discrepancy between barrel and bottle that I saw in the vintage, but the wine is still outstanding, just not profound. It will be interesting to revisit this wine in a number of years. Forget it for 7-8 years and drink it over the following 30.