The wine of the month

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Château Duhart-Milon, 2018

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5,0 NJP of 5,0 NJP

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November 2024: Château Duhart-Milon, 2018 (approx. 117 EUR/123 USD; selling price on the internet excluding delivery costs) red dry blend wine, Pauillac, Haut-Médoc, Médoc, Bordeaux, France, 5,0 NJP of 5,0 NJP (100 points of 100 points)

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Wow - what a delicious wine! Château Duhart-Milon 2018 is a nuanced, austere, complex, sweet spicy, fruity and flavourful wine, which has a fabulous balance between tartaric acidity, sweetness, fruitiness and tannins. The complex aroma is characterized by vanilla, sweet tobacco, prunes, ripe dark cherries, cocoa, pencil shavings and black currant. The complex and concentrated flavour is characterized by vanilla, prunes, ripe dark cherries, blackberries, dark chocolate, black pepper and crème de cassis. The wine has silky tannins and a very long aftertaste of sweet spices and ripe dark cherries that linger forever in the mouth. Château Duhart-Milon 2018 can be drunk with great pleasure already now, but it will develop for many more years, at least 15 years i.e. until at least the year 2039.

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The absolutely wonderful and fabulous Château Duhart-Milon 2018 will go really well with grilled beef fillet/entrecôte with café de Paris sauce and potato gratin or with grilled duck breast with port- and cherry sauce and potato stoemp (roughly mashed potatoes with vegetables and cream) or with pasta carbonara (with fresh tagliatelle) or with slow-roasted porchetta with grilled vegetables and buttery garlic bread or with reindeer stew with buttery mashed potatoes or with grilled pork chops with grilled red peppers, yellow onions and tomatoes and Béarnaise sauce or with Boeuf Bourguignon with buttery mashed potatoes or with hard cheeses such as Cheddar, Svecia, Västerbotten, Parmesan and Grana Padano. The wine should be served at 18 to 19°C in Bordeaux glasses, if possible, from Orrefors, Kosta Boda, Spiegelau or Riedel. Another option is to serve it at 16°C (when room temperature or outdoor temperature is above 23°C) and then enjoy it as it starts to grow in the glass.

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Château Duhart-Milon 2018 consists of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon and 35% Merlot. The grapes for the wine come from Château Duhart-Milon's 76 ha vineyards, which are located on the western side of the Château Lafite Rothschild (which owns Château Duhart-Milon). The soil in them consists of clayey sandy gravel underlain by limestone. The grapes are picked and sorted by hand. After very careful selections in both the vineyards and the winery, the grapes are destemmed and gently pressed. The grape mass, which consists of crushed grapes and grape juice, is pumped into stainless steel vats where the fermentation begins. The specific of the fermentation at Château Duhart-Milon is that it takes place over a period of 8 to 10 days, that each specific part of the vineyards is fermented separately and that the fermentation temperature in stainless steel vats is carefully controlled. To intensify the leaching, the fermenting wine is pumped several times a day from the bottom of the vat over the grape skin mass that lies on the top of the vat. After fermentation, the finished fermented wine undergoes malolactic fermentation. When the malolactic fermentation, which usually takes a month, is complete, it is time to rack the wine to 100% new French 225 litre oak barrels (barrique). During the aging, which takes 24 months, the wine is racked a few more times per year and clarified once using 4 to 6 egg whites. Then the wines from the various oak barrels are blended and the wine is bottled. Finally, the wine is aged for a few more months before it is released on the market.

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Château Duhart-Milon-wines are imported to Sweden by Winefinder.