2018 Chateau Croix de Labrie Saint-Emillion

Around 400 cases made, depending on the vintage. Concentrated, precise, and built for the long haul — dark fruit, iron-rich earth, violet, five-spice, and a brooding mineral depth that comes from 40% yield losses to mildew, the surviving fruit carrying an intensity that only adversity produces. The 2018 Château Croix de Labrie is the first fully certified organic and biodynamic vintage — Axelle Courdurie's conviction paying off in the glass: maximum six bunches per vine, hand-harvested, aged in French oak, minimal sulfur, 96% Merlot from ancient seabed soils on the Saint-Émilion plateau. 2018 was the Right Bank's finest vintage of the decade — rich, ripe, and complete — and at this estate, where the yields were already devastated by mildew, the grapes that survived were extraordinary. James Suckling called it the finest Croix de Labrie he had ever tasted.