Château Montrose, 2025
Château Montrose, 2025
- 75cl
- 13.4%
- Red Still
- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot
Please note, en primeur wines are not available for delivery until they arrive in the UK
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Est. delivery in 2028
Château Montrose sits like a fortress above the Gironde estuary, making some of Saint-Estèphe's most powerful and long-lived wines. This second-growth Médoc property creates a classically built Bordeaux from gravelly soils, blending predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon with Merlot and smaller portions of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
What the critics say:
"Deep dark ruby garnet, opaque core, violet reflections, delicate edge brightening. Candied violets, scent of roses, fine cassis, incredibly seductive, delicate notes of precious wood, underlaid with black forest berries. Complex, full-bodied, highly elegant, freshly structured, ripe, supporting tannins, blackberries, nougat and cherries on the finish, lingers for a long time, sure maturity potential."
"A timeless classic in the making, the 2025 Montrose unfurls in the glass with notes of dark berries, black truffle, burning embers and violets, gaining in range and detail with aeration. Full-bodied, dense and elegantly muscular, it's layered and multidimensional, with a prodigiously concentrated core of fruit, exceptional quality of tannin and a long, resonant finish. The 2025 is a blend of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot and 4% Cabernet Franc, derived exclusively from the estate's historic core on the fourth terrace situated just in front of the château itself. With a pH of 3.65 and 13.4% alcohol, it remains classically balanced despite its impressive power and intensity. Readers will have a fascinating time parsing the nuances of style and quality between the 2025, 2023 and 2022 over the decades to come!"
"Vibrant purple colour in the glass. Amazing fragrance, so pure and crystalline – blackcurrants and violet notes. Silky and glossy, packed full of cherry and strawberry fruit with quite massy tannins but keeping a really cool and compact form. Structured with layers of elements but also a little granular, tight and spiced. Liquorice, cool cola and wet stone edges. Maybe less overtly charming and filling than in previous years, but this has a distinctly cool mineral edge and slightly grippy tannins on the finish. I like the style, it’s quite serious and terroir transparent. Ageing should soften this and relax a little. 3.65pH. 80 IPT. 12% press wine. Ageing 18 months, 60% new oak."
"Deep and nuanced plum fruit on the opening, vivid ruby in colour with tension, lift and estate signature. An extremely classic Montrose, love the lift with the depth of cassis, cocoa bean, liquorice, crushed mint leaf, squid ink, crayon, a supremely Left Bank wine, very much in the 2023 vein for me, which was a vintage I adored. This has precision and beauty, the kind of En Primeur sample where you feel fresh and energised at the end of tasting it. 60% new oak for ageing, Pierre Graffeuille director."
The vineyard occupies a privileged position on Saint-Estèphe's gravelly plateau, with deep Günzian gravel over clay and limestone subsoils. At 43 metres above sea level, the site benefits from excellent drainage whilst the underlying clay provides water retention during dry periods. The proximity to the Gironde estuary moderates temperature extremes, creating ideal conditions for slow, even ripening. This terroir naturally produces wines of structure and minerality, with the gravel warming during the day and radiating heat back to the vines at night.
Saint-Estèphe is the northernmost and coolest of the Médoc's four great communes, known for producing the most structured and longest-lived wines of the Left Bank. The appellation's cooler climate and higher proportion of clay soils favour later-ripening varieties, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, which achieves remarkable concentration here. Unlike neighbouring Pauillac's power or Saint-Julien's elegance, Saint-Estèphe combines both qualities with an additional mineral austerity that sets it apart. The commune's wines are built for the long haul, often requiring a decade or more to reveal their true character.
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.
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Château Montrose
