Château Kirwan Margaux 2019

Barrel Sample. With its new cellars, the estate is performing at top speed and this vintage keeps up the fine track record. Firm tannins and beautifully perfumed fruit are blending together to give a wine that has style as well as structured fruitiness, with all the elegance of great Margaux. Think long-term aging for this wine.

The 2019 Kirwan has an understated, cedar and graphite-tinged bouquet, a little Pauillac-like in style, nuanced and gaining intensity with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with taut tannins, focused, tensile and linear with plenty of sapidity towards its oyster shell-tinged finish. Very precise and very sophisticated, this is the best Kirwan in many years - maybe a benchmark for the estate. Tasted blind at the Southwold annual tasting.

Redcurrants, Bing cherry, graphite, licorice, violet, and flowery incense notes all define the bouquet of the 2019 Chateau Kirwan, a medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated Margaux that has a pretty, elegant, juicy style. It doesn't have the density of the top wines in the appellation, yet it's certainly nicely balanced, has supple tannins, and nicely integrated acidity, all making for a beautifully polished, elegant 2019 to drink over the coming 20 years or so.

The 2019 Kirwan opens in the glass with a reticent bouquet of muddled berry fruit, spices and pencil shavings, followed by a medium-bodied, youthfully firm palate with a delicate core of fruit and powdery structuring tannins. This lacks a little precision and plenitude in this generous vintage.