2018 Chateau Ausone - St. Emilion

2018 Chateau Ausone, St. Emilion

Chateau Ausone sits on a steep limestone hillside just outside the village of Saint-Emilion, on a site linked by legend to the Roman poet Ausonius. Alain Vauthier has run the estate since taking full control in 1997, and his daughter Pauline, a trained oenologist, has increasingly taken the lead in vineyard and cellar. Ausone remains one of Bordeaux's most sought-after and hardest-to-find wines, with production levels smaller than most of its Right Bank peers.

The 2018 growing season opened wet and challenging before turning into a long, dry Indian summer that restored balance to the fruit. Merlot was picked in late September and Cabernet Franc followed in early October, from vines averaging over fifty years of age, some planted more than a century ago. Yields settled around thirty-seven hectoliters per hectare. The finished wine blends sixty percent Cabernet Franc with forty percent Merlot, aged twenty months in entirely new French oak.

Deep purple-black in the glass, this wine reveals blackberry, truffle, forest floor and graphite, with violets and crushed stone emerging as it breathes. The palate is dense, full-bodied and wrapped in fine tannins through an exceptionally long finish. Pour it with braised short ribs or aged hard chees