Rich and smooth, a former garage wine turned respectable. It is powerful but very smooth, with sweet damsons and juicy berry fruit.
Reviews:
- Wine Spectator: A fleshy, inviting style, with lots of crushed fig and steeped blackberry fruit woven with warmed cocoa and pain d’épices, all backed by a distinctly racy graphite note. Stays fleshy through the finish without being heavy. Best from 2013 through 2028
- Wine Advocate: Showing far better than it did from barrel, but still not one of the great efforts from this estate, this ripe, richly fruity wine has plenty of black cherry, black currant and cedary notes intermixed with some tobacco leaf and subtle background barrique smells. The wine is medium-bodied, possesses excellent concentration, and has lost the overt herbaceousness it exhibited from barrel. Drink it over the next decade.
Producer Information
Château Rol Valentin is a small, 7.3-hectare (18 acre) Saint-Émilion wine estate established in the mid-1990s by former French football star, Eric Prissette. The property was promoted to the ranks of the Grand Cru Classé (from the Grand Cru title) in the 2022 classification of Saint-Émilion and lies just over two kilometers (one mile) north of St-Emilion town. Following over a decade under Prissette, the estate was acquired by husband-and-wife team Nicolas and Alexandra Robin in 2009. It is one of five properties controlled by their company, Vignobles Robin, in the so-called “right-bank” Bordeaux region northeast of the Dordogne river which includes the regions of Pomerol, Montagne-Saint-Emilion and Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux – all of which contain a Vignobles Robin property. Château Rol Valentin itself is planted predominantly with Merlot with around 10 percent Cabernet Franc. The estate vineyards are divided in two blocks, with one area at the château comprising about 60 percent of the vines on clayey limestone soils while the remaining 40 percent lies in a parcel of sandier soil just northwest of Saint-Emilion town. Consultant oenologist Stéphane Derenoncourt has worked with the château since 1998.
