La Conseillante 2025

Violets, lilacs, and chocolate drizzles, followed by plums, black cherries, blue fruits, licorice, smoke, and truffles, create the aromatic profile. On the palate, the wine is pure silk, velvet, and cashmere, perfectly suited to the seemingly endless waves of sweet, bright, plush fruits, with their freshness, elegance, and stunning sense of purity. The finish lingers past the 60-second mark and keeps going long after the wine has gone where it needs to be. One of the keys to the success of the dry 2025 vintage began a few years in advance, with the addition of compost to the vineyards, aiding water retention, helping the fruit gain maturity, and increasing yields. The wine blends 87% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Cabernet Sauvignon along with 8% press wine. 13.5% ABV, 3.66 pH. The harvest took place from August 28 to September 17. Yields were 30 hectoliters per hectare. Drink from 2030 to 2065.

• Nom du critique: Jeff Leve

The 2025 La Conseillante is another brilliant wine in the making for this Pomerol reference point. Wafting from the glass with aromas of ripe mulberries and blackberries mingled with hints of violets and truffle, it's medium- to full-bodied, deep and unctuous, with lively acids, ultra-refined tannins and a long, floral finish. It's a blend of 87% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 3% Cabernet Sauvignon (from new plantings that already make it into the blend) that attained 13.5% alcohol. Fermentations were capped at 26 degrees Celsius, the coolest ever, to extract selectively, and the entire production is maturing in barriques this year.

• Nom du critique: William Kelley

Complex already, with blackberry, blueberry, currant and mint aromas that follow through to a medium body with firm tannins and a savory, juicy finish with fresh herbs and an almost rose stem undertone. You can feel the grape skins. Very primary. 87% merlot, 10 cabernet franc and 3% cabernet sauvignon.

• Nom du critique: James Suckling

The 2025 La Conseillante is shaping up to be magnificent. Rich and luscious in the glass, the 2025 offers up an exotic mélange of inky dark fruit, cloves, new leather, licorice and mocha. This is the first vintage that sees the return of Cabernet Sauvignon, historically a part of the blend from at least 1871 to 1956, when frost devastated many vineyards in Pomerol. The 2025 is impressively deep, but also quite vibrant. I can't wait to see how it ages. It's a superb effort from Technical Director Marielle Cazaux and her team. Cazaux made an immediate impact when she arrived in 2015, starting with a move to lower-intervention farming that was immediately apparent. I will have more to say about that and other related subjects in a separate article we will publish later in the year. Tasted two times.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2035 - 2065
• Nom du critique: Antonio Galloni

A really assured La Conseillante with exceptional balance and so much pleasure to offer. Fragrant aromas on the nose with floral aspects, violets, some savoury earthy notes, black chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon spice, blood orange and iron. Smooth and sapid with such vibrant energy straight away – quite tight tannins still, firm and streamlined but really delicate and precise. A grip of liquorice and flint on the finish means this ends cool, crisp and spiced. Really nuanced in flavours, a little darker and more complex in aromatics than La Conseillante can sometimes be, yet with such intensity and no heaviness. It would have been easy to make a more muscular wine but this is sleek and so defined. The team applied zinc oxide as sunscreen and used mulching to protect soil humidity. First time including Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend. 3.66pH. A yield of 30hl/ha. 85% grand vin (never reached this high before). Ageing in 70% new oak and 30% one-year-old barrels (no amphora this year).

• Nom du critique: Georgina Hindle

The 2025 La Conseillante was cropped at 30 hl/ha and is matured in 70% new oak barrels, there are no amphoras this year as Marielle Cazaux felt the wine needed the micro-oxygenation. It has a very pure nose with black cherries, blueberry and wild strawberry fruit, just a little Burgundy-like in style. A hint of orange rind loiters in the background. The palate is medium-bodied with filigree tannins, a silver thread of acidity, quite linear and strict on the entry, gentle grip with a dash of black pepper towards the finish. A second glass that happened to have been opened for an hour revealed some of its opulence that will surely be enhanced during the élevage. It will deserve four to five years in bottle but will have a long life ahead and will give a lot of pleasure.

• Nom du critique: Neal Martin

Brought up all in barrels with no amphora used in this vintage, the 2025 Château La Conseillante is an ultra-classic Conseillante with a very floral perfume of cassis, assorted red and blue fruits, violets, iris, lead pencil shavings, and graphite. It's medium to full-bodied on the palate, with a concentrated yet focused, juicy, lively mouthfeel, beautiful tannins, and a gorgeous finish. Checking in at 13.5% alcohol with a pH of 3.66, this beautiful Conseillante has the purity and balance to offer pleasure early on yet, like most vintages here, will need 7-8 years to hit its prime drinking plateau.

• Nom du critique: Jeb Dunnuck

Austere on the opening, takes a beat then shows a creamy character as it opens. In colour, like so many you will find a vivid ink, followed by traces of gourmet cocoa bean, damson, chalk, rose petal, slate and crayon. Clay and gravel soils here have been worked organically and biodynamically for many years, 70% new oak for ageing, 3.66ph. Overall harvest August 28 to September 17. 30hl/h yield. Marielle Cazeaux director. A clear contender for an upscore in bottle.

• Nom du critique: Jane Anson