2020 Château Durfort-Vivens

Community Tasting Notes (16) Avg Score: 95.1 points

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View mike410's profile
  • Report Issue

  4/23/2024 - mike410 Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Amazing Durfort. Drinking well now.

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Claymonster's profile
  • Report Issue

  3/24/2024 - Claymonster Likes this wine: 94 Points

  I have one bottle set aside for the distant future but decided to purchase a second because A) I wanted to try it and establish a baseline for comparison, and B) it was my birthday so I wanted something nice to drink with the rack of lamb.
  
  Decanted for three hours, back in the bottle, then consumed 2/3 of the bottle over the next 4-5 hours. This is just lovely. It is restrained and elegant, with a complex bouquet of dark berries, cassis, florals, and lightly toasted oak. On the palate it is even better, with medium body (only 13.5%), refreshing acidity, and a cool and calculated slate character that combines with luscious chocolate. I don't know how they were able to produce this wine during the hot 2020 vintage, but bravo. The tannins are every-so-slightly edgy at this point (also they're amazing for such a young wine) and I expect a long runway of further refinement and development. Delicious now with a bright future ahead of it. And an excellent value at the $64 paid. No noticeable difference for the remaining 1/3 bottle on day 2.
  
  Music pairing: Idris Muhammad - Peace And Rhythm

  6 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Wine.ape's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/28/2024 - Wine.ape Likes this wine: 96 Points

  Wow! This is so good. Drank over three days, the wine didn’t change a lot. Still amazing primary fruit with perfect acidity and really smooth tannins. Elegant and intense. Crazy how enjoyable it is at the moment, 96++.

  3 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (1)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Léognan's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/25/2024 - Léognan Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Château Durfort-Vivens Margaux GCC 2020 (13.5% ABV)
  (88% CS / 12% M)
  To anticipate it: The wine is already close to shutting down. In contrast to the 19, which I tasted 17 months ago, I am almost too late with the 20. The very dark purple-coloured wine (already) has none of the enormous nasal fruitiness that first impressed me so much about its predecessor. It has also largely lost its primary fruit on the palate. There are certainly notes of cassis, blackberries, black cherries and then also raspberries and hints of juniper, but the acidity evidently overpowers all of this, were it not for the ultra-long finish.
  This ultra-long finish on roses, violets and something almost narcissistic, carried by extremely finely polished tannins, as if one had bitten into these flowers and now realised their "flower flesh" in retrospect, a finish in which fruit notes, e.g. dried plums and dried black cherries, are revealed again.
  This will be a powerful Margaux one day, in contrast perhaps to the rather playful 19, but I would give it a rest in the cellar over the next few years (even if the notes on the CT do not show any signs of imminent closure until recently).
  At the moment 92-93, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were 97/98 one day...

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View Eric Becker's profile
  • Report Issue

  2/4/2024 - Eric Becker Likes this wine: 96 Points

  After my first encounter with this wine (TN from 04/23) I now had the opportunity to follow it over a couple of days. Fortunately it even exceeded my lofty expectations, this is the best vintage of Durfort-Vivens, which I have tasted.
  The colour is notably blacker than the 2019, has a beautiful gloss and a magenta rim, it is also denser than the 2018, the wine is viscous and stains the glass, overall it visually resembles the 2015 vintage.
  On the nose the wine is rich and exotic, pure, super expressive and constantly evolving, featuring dark fruits covered with sugar powder, raspberries as well, some tilled earth and licorice and accompanying these bassy tones a strikingly intense floral top note. In terms of complexity this beats previous vintages with maybe 2019 as the only exception.
  On the palate the 2020 is simply a beast, inky and mouthfilling, yet fresh and pure and full of detail and here also with a beautiful note of cedar. There is a good amount of tannin, but it is so fine-grained, that it's initially overwhelmed by the wine's richness of flavours and only really got my attention on the second day. Last year I feared that the wine might be over the top, as it tasted notably riper and more exotic than its stablemates Ferriere and Haut-Bages-Libéral, however, I can now confirm that this is not the case. The wine indeed feels riper and more deftly extracted than the 2019, but there is nothing pruney, overly sweet, hot or diffuse about it.
  This is not only the best Durfort-Vivens, but also the best young Bordeaux, which I have tasted so far. Everything, be it the complexity of it's perfume, its sense of place, its intensity married with lift and detail and its rock-solid structure makes me think, that this is going to become a legend. Try one now and bury at least one case. 96+

  6 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

View all 16 Community Tasting Notes

Professional reviews have copyrights and you can view them here for your personal use only as private content. To view pro reviews you must either subscribe to a pre-integrated publication or manually enter reviews below. Learn more.