Château Cos d'Estournel Blanc, 2025
Château Cos d'Estournel Blanc, 2025
- 75cl
- 13%
- White Still
- Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon
Please note, en primeur wines are not available for delivery until they arrive in the UK
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Est. delivery in 2028
Cos d'Estournel's white wine represents something of a departure for this legendary Saint-Estèphe estate, better known for producing some of the Left Bank's most exotic and powerful reds. We find their venture into white winemaking fascinating - this is Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon treated with the same precision and attention to detail that makes their red wine so distinctive.
What the critics say:
"An incredible wine with electrifying acidity and great depth and concentration. It’s full-bodied and full of character, showing fresh and dried citrus, then honeysuckle and other white flowers. The palate takes off with bright, intense acidity. A pH of just over 3 gives a unique combination of tangy acidity and ripe fruit. Special white. 56% sauvignon blanc and 44% semillon. Best ever?"
"Light greenish yellow, silver reflections. Fresh peach, lime zest, delicate hints of orange blossom, multi-faceted bouquet, floral and suggestive. Juicy, white tropical fruit, fresh gooseberries, racy acidity structure, lemony and good persistence, vineyard peach in the aftertaste, stimulating food companion with good ageing potential."
The white wine vineyards benefit from the same gravelly soils over limestone that make Cos d'Estournel's reds so distinctive. The proximity to the Gironde estuary provides a moderating maritime influence, protecting against frost while maintaining freshness through cool morning mists. These well-draining soils force the vines to dig deep, contributing to the wine's mineral backbone and age-worthy structure.
While Saint-Estèphe is renowned for structured, age-worthy red wines, white wine production here is relatively rare and unregulated by specific AOC rules for whites. This gives producers like Cos d'Estournel the freedom to experiment with grape varieties and winemaking techniques. The appellation's cooler climate compared to other Left Bank communes actually suits white grape varieties well, providing the natural acidity that gives these wines their distinctive freshness and longevity.
The 2025 Bordeaux vintage emerged from one of the most demanding growing seasons in recent memory — the earliest budbreak since 1989, June temperatures second only to 2003 since records began, and an unusually early harvest beginning in August for the whites. Conditions that should have produced heavy, overripe wines. They didn't. Decanter's Georgie Hindle, who tasted close to 200 wines ahead of the formal campaign, describes "exceptional concentration, aromatic purity and a freshness that contradicts the record-breaking heat.
The early critical consensus places 2025 stylistically between the precision of 2020 and the structure of 2016, with the brightness of 2023 — a combination that suggests a very serious vintage indeed. Yields are dramatically low, the smallest crop since 1991, with production across the Gironde running around 15% below the five-year average. The quality is here. There simply isn't very much of it.
OUR GROWERS
Château Cos D'estournel
