Pauillac, Château Clerc Milon 2015
James Suckling 95 (2018); Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW 91 (2022); Jancis Robinson MW 17/20 (2019)
Mix any six bottles and you pay the Any 6+ price at checkout — no code needed.
£10 tracked UK delivery, however many bottles.
We pack and send twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, by Royal Mail Tracked 48.
Members pay £86.40 — £21.60 less on this bottle. Membership is £120 a year and carries the EDKA Promise. Membership terms
Why this wine
A Pauillac classed growth sitting between Lafite and Mouton and farmed to the same standard by the same owners. 2015 in Pauillac is compared on the estate to the opulence of 2005, and Clerc Milon's register is refinement and silk rather than sheer muscle. It is the Rothschild Pauillac that gives most pleasure earliest.
At a glance
- Grape
- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot
- Region
- Bordeaux, France
- Alcohol
- 13.50%
- Body
- Full
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- Medium
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Long (10-20 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Cheese
How it tastes
Fresh, elegant aromas of ripe Morello cherry with liquorice and toast, opening onto crisp red fruit, dark chocolate and dried flowers. Full in weight but silky with it, the tannins finely chiselled and the finish rich and harmonious. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
The producer
Fifth Growth Clerc Milon sits between Château Lafite and Château Mouton and belongs to the same Rothschild stable, which bought the estate in 1970 and has rebuilt it steadily since — a winery powered by photovoltaic panels, a gravity-fed vat room and a new tasting room among the investments. The 41 hectares overlook the Gironde on a terrace of windblown gravel and sand resting on a clay-limestone base, facing south to south-east, with natural drainage from the slope and sea breezes that flatten out temperature swings; most of the vineyard was planted in the early 20th century and one plot of Carménère, among the oldest in Bordeaux, dates from 1947. Fruit is hand-harvested into small crates and fermented parcel by parcel in gravity-fed stainless steel vats, and the Grand Vin is then aged 18 months in French oak barrels, half of them new. A dry spring and early summer in 2015 left small berries and a short crop, and late August and September rain carried ripening through a harvest that stretched across 23 days.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16–18°C and decant an hour ahead. Roast lamb, beef fillet, duck or aged Gouda are all good matches. Drinking well now and with a decade or more still in front of it.