Unwinding in the glass with aromas of plums, wild berries, dark chocolate and creamy new oak, the 2022 Barde-Haut is medium to full-bodied, rich and fleshy, with a taut, youthfully structured profile and youthfully firm tannins. Exhibiting attractive purity of fruit and tension, gentler extraction would have seen it score higher.

This 17-hectare amphitheater of a vineyard has produced a successful 2021 Barde-Haut, offering up aromas of sweet berries, cherries and plums framed by a creamy patina of new oak. Medium to full-bodied, rich and layered, with tangy acids and a generous endowment of powdery structuring tannins, it's a blend of more or less 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc (the latter increasingly deriving from massale selections taken at Clos l'Eglise).