2018 Chateau de Bernat Latrique Bordeaux Superieur

Thomas Duclos is THE talent to watch on the Right Bank.

He’s the prodigiously gifted consultant behind Saint-Émilion crown jewels Château Cheval Blanc ($1,199) and Château Ausone ($670).

Dubbed Decanter’s “new rising star,” he succeeded world-renowned enologist Michel Rolland at several Grand Cru estates and has a maestro’s touch with three- and four-digit bottlings. That makes it even more impressive that he helped author one of the biggest value-blockbusters from Bordeaux’s outstanding 2018 vintage.

The 95-point, cashmere-smooth Château de Bernat Latrique Bordeaux Superieur is a single-vineyard bottling. The product of a gorgeously ripe year Jeb Dunnuck called an “undeniably great vintage,” this Right Bank blend wowed at the Decanter World Wine Awards, scoring in the 96th percentile and nabbing Gold Medal honors.

This family-run property has increasingly come onto the radar of buyers and critics since 2008, when Jean-Phillipe Rénier took over management. In 2014, he hired Duclos, and a few years later they overhauled viticultural practices, converting 65 estate acres to organic farming.

While Bernat’s wines have made an extraordinary leap forward in quality, their prices haven’t budged. Today, snapping up a bottle bearing the thumbprint of Duclos is like getting in early on Michel Rolland’s career. Widely regarded as one of the most influential stylists of Bordeaux’s future, Duclos is willing to take risks to achieve site transparency and precise balance.

That made him the perfect interpreter for 2018, a vintage of “intense ripeness,” according to Vinous. While other estates ran headlong into overconcentration, Duclos and the Bernat team helped rein in the harvest’s power and express fine acidity and herbal detail.

This is a bottle you can proudly boast about having in your cellar.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 14.50%
• 1.5 hours
• Now – 2035
• 80% Merlot20% Cabernet Sauvignon
• Serving temperature – 60°
• Cork