2014 Le Boscq
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Tasting notes
Powerful, knitted down, mint chocolate, cocoa bean, cassis and bilberry, still young and unfolding. Good qulity but not huge depth through the mid palate at this stage, give it a good few hours in a carafe to open it up. 37% new oak, manual harvest in small crates, gravel over clay. 18ha estate from Dourthe Vignobles.
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Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
51% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot. 37% new French oak for 12–14 months. Not quite as ripe-fruited as the 2016, a touch more herbaceous but nicely so. The oak and chocolatey character on the finish is a little dominant still. Tannins also still pretty firm and the acidity sticks out a little bit. (JH)
The 2014 Le Boscq is a blend of 51% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot. It has a perfumed bouquet with brambly red berry fruit tinged with cedar and incense aromas. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, crisp and quite tensile with lively blackcurrant and raspberry fruit, fine mineralité and a brisk, quite stony, grippy finish. Give this Saint Estèphe three or four years in bottle and you should have a fine Cru Bourgeois.
The 2014 Le Boscq is a sleeper for the vintage and shows just how well Saint-Estèphe did in 2014. Succulent dark cherry, plum, smoke, gravel and cured meat notes all meld together in a deep, pliant wine endowed with notable depth and intensity. This is a fabulous Cru Bourgeois from the Dourthe family of estates.