Château Calon Ségur 2021

With 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, the highest proportion since 2009. What a bouquet—goosebumps—mineral-driven, extraordinarily delicate on the nose. On the palate, clear and pure like a mountain stream, precise, velvety, tannins of the highest quality, long finish, great balance. A grace.

Revisited in bottle, the 2021 Calon-Ségur opens in the glass with aromas of dark berries mingled with violets, pencil shavings, lilac, Indian spices, cigar wrapper and grilled meats. Medium to full-bodied, dense and suave, with powdery tannins, lively acids and a penetratingly sapid and discreetly carnal finish, it appears to have lost a touch of aromatic precision during élevage, but it remains a compelling Calon-Ségur.

A step ahead of the pack in this vintage, this offers a hint of polish to fleshier-than-most cassis and plum purée flavors. Solidly built, with a well-buried chalky spine, plus tangy acidity. Lilac, bay and black tea notes add range on the finish. Shows the vintage’s taut character, but this has more depth and better proportion than most of its colleagues. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Best from 2025 through 2037. 7,800 cases made.

Gentle cherry blossom fragrance with raspberry, cranberry and red cherry. Floral and super aromatic. Tangy and clean, a lovely crystalline aspect to the palate – nicely lean and straight, touching on austere but this also has an enjoyable creaminess that gives the weight and texture and sustains the wine to a long finish. I love the mineral ending, pure and precise. Really elegantly presented, not trying too hard. Very drinkable.

A juicy and caressingly astringent red with currant, berry and cedar aromas with citrus undertones. Medium body. Firm and silky with a delicious finish. A little tight at the end. Two or three years will open it up.

This is an elegant, energetic, vibrant, lifted, almost high-toned, refined vintage. The fruit shows purity, lift, and refinement, woven with classicism. The perfume intrigues you to learn more with its flowers, tobacco leaf, cherries, spicy currants, espresso, and orange profile. The medium-bodied wine is forward and should be approachable after just a few years of aging, which is a good thing, as it is already quite charming. The finish delivers a nice, spicy, minty, uplifting endnote. The wine was produced from 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc, 7% Merlot, and 1% Petit Verdot. Drink from 2026–2055.

Dark ruby garnet colour with purple reflections, delicate ochre rim. Subtle hints of graphite and cassis, black forest berries, fine herbal savouriness, a touch of precious wood, some nougat in the background. Juicy dark berries on the palate, fresh acidity, integrated tannins, mineral, will benefit from further bottle ageing.

One of the true gems of the vintage is the 2021 Château Calon Ségur, from tiny yields of 26 hectoliters per hectare and a blend of 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc, 7% Merlot, and 1% Petit Verdot. This beauty was aged for 20 months in 100% new barrels and comes in at 13% alcohol. It delivers more depth, sweet fruit, and charm than most in the vintage, with a complex, layered profile of cassis, black raspberry, tobacco, leather, and savory, floral-like aromas and flavors. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, this balanced, layered, complete 2021 has ripe tannins, the vintage’s focused, elegant style, solid mid-palate depth, and a beautiful finish. It already offers pleasure but deserves 4–5 years of bottle age and will provide two decades of prime drinking. This vintage doesn’t get much better, and it’s worth your time and money.

Calon Ségur 2021 has a dark, viscous color and confirms the high regard of the en primeur tastings. Sweet and rich, it shows great power and high intensity on the nose. Deep and liqueur-like, with tar and licorice notes, enormously forceful and assertive. Superb intensity and breed on the palate, very concentrated with taut, fresh acidity. A highly nuanced, great Calon, built for enduring freshness and detailed presence. Endless finish with a slim 13.0% ABV. Not to be missed.

Maintains the clarity and precision that it showed En Primeur, with finely cut tannins, cassis fruits and bitter black chocolate. Savoury and finessed, grilled sandalwood and cocoa bean. Good stuff, understated but refined. Harvest September 28 to October 14, 100% new oak, 43% 1st wine, 36hl/ha yield. Old school finesse, not exuberance. Director Vincent Millet.

The 2021 Calon Segur has a deep garnet-purple color. It starts off a bit broody with notes of cedar chest, wild sage, and damp soil, leading to a core of menthol, stewed blackcurrants, and prunes, with a touch of balsamic. The medium-bodied palate is soft and spicy, delivering a good core of berry preserves flavors with exotic spices accents, finishing on a stewed tea note.

The wine appears more closed than its peers, with fruit that comes across as very ripe and rich. The nose is tight and intense, with notes of black fruit. At this stage, the palate is also very compact and the finish is strict. But we are confident, as the texture is beautiful and it will come into harmony.

Subtle at first, with a very enticing floral delicacy, the nose proves exquisite, offering one of the most delicate perfumes, carried by richly expressive fruit. Divine on the palate, you can almost see the glow of its halo, with a multitude of distinguished fruits, perfectly ripe, and a velvety texture. Saline, juicy, indulgent, and flavorful on the finish.

Calon Ségur is defined by its subtlety, by this pursuit of coherence and aromatic balance. The oak is present without dominating, while the Cabernet Sauvignon brings plenty of freshness. Juicy on the attack, the wine shines with finesse and its ability to combine vigor and freshness, which I had already noted during the en primeur tastings. This shows that the relevance of the samples presented has the merit of being both reliable and explicit. A Calon Ségur that does not yet seem to be where it could be. A little cellaring should allow its stated ambitions to be fulfilled.

Dark, deep color. Very aromatic, refined nose with pure, ripe, floral, and complex fruit. A suave note, rare in this vintage. Precise on entry, very aromatic mid-palate, with plenty of flavor and fine glycerol; the wine caresses the palate, juicy and complex through the finish. Very well built and, above all, impossible to spit out. Blend: 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc, 7% Merlot, 1% Petit Verdot. Alcohol: 12.9% – pH: 3.75. Yield: 36 hl/ha. Harvest dates: Merlot from September 28 to October 2; top Cabernet Sauvignon between October 12 and 14.

“When you have great cabernets, merlot has no place in the blend,” says Vincent Millet. Indeed, the 93% cabernets make for a dense, elongated, and voluminous wine, bursting with energy. A bouquet of small black fruits, graphite, a balance between roundness and tension, refined élevage, and the nobility of these cabernets—this is great Calon.

In the winery's style, this is seriously dense with solid tannins and concentration. It is a powerful wine with a majority of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc that has structure and dense black fruits. The wine is likely to age well. Drink from 2028.