Ausone

Tasting Notes:
tiny production of just over 1,300 cases will make the 2005 Ausone impossible to find, but proprietor Alain Vauthier continues to exhibit the Midas touch with his perfectionist efforts at this estate. This brilliant, blue/black-hued offering reveals an extraordinarily youthful, but promising nose of incense, blueberries, blackberries, currants, licorice, and crushed rocks. This intense 2005 boasts powerful, super-layered, multidimensional flavors with tremendous extraction, yet they come across as incredibly sublime, even delicate for such a stunningly concentrated, full-bodied effort. A masterpiece of concentration and balance, it will no doubt be drinking well a century from now. Wine Advocate # 176 Apr 2008
Parker Points: 100
Drinking Period: 2030-2080

Tasting Notes:
Readers should not hesitate to check out Ausone's new second wine, Chapelle d'Ausone. It reveals Ausone's minerality, finesse, and quality presented in a lower-keyed, more open-knit style. A dense opaque purple color offers up restrained, but pure aromas of liquid minerals, blackberries, black raspberries, and flowers. Medium to full-bodied, with high tannin but a long, super-pure, symmetrical mouth-feel, this dazzling, extremely complex Ausone requires 6-10 years of cellaring. Wine Advocate #134 (Apr 2001)
Parker Points: 94
Drinking Period: 2010-2050

Tasting Notes:
Consumers should take a look at the 2000 Chapelle d'Ausone. This wine is priced at 10% of its bigger sibling. The tightly-structured, mineral-infused 2000 Chapelle d'Ausone exhibits outstanding concentration as well as depth in addition to floral, blackberry, and blueberry aromas and flavors. Deep and rich, it is better than many Ausones produced in the seventies, sixties, and fifties ... believe it or not! Robert Parker Wine Advocate April 2003
Parker Points: 90
Drinking Period: 2008-2025