Château Certan de May: Tasting & Drinking
My experience with the wines of Château Certan de May is focused on young wines, not wines in a state of maturity; the vineyard is, after all, little bigger than that of Château Lafleur, and the wines are not frequently sighted. Nevertheless I have been impressed with some vintages in their youth; both the 2008 and 2009 are potentially excellent wines, the former of these two vintages reaffirming the right bank’s success in an under-rated vintage doomed to forever remain in the shadow of 2009, when the wine was again of high quality. Working backwards, in 2007 the wine was slightly softer, in keeping with the nature of the year, but there are some very good points to it and in the context of the vintage I have scored it very highly.
Moving forward, I found the structure within the 2010 to be very robust, and lacked a little of the fruit purity and freshness I was looking for within the wine; it should be remembered, though, that this was merely a barrel sample, and formal assessment of the finished wine is required to make any definitive judgement. In 2011 and 2012, both difficult vintages, the wines showed fairly well, in keeping with the lesser nature of these two years, with my preference being for 2012, a year which Pomerol perhaps faired a little better than some other appellations. Again, though, these are barrel sample assessments.
On the whole, taking into account the fact that this assessments have been carried out on unfinished samples, the wines of Château Certan de May appear to be very worthwhile and my encounters with them have often suggested promise. I suspect they demand a long time in the cellar to really show their true merit though. (26/5/10, updated 19/2/14)
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