Released this morning are the 2025 Durantou petits châteaux wines, Montlandrie, Saintayme, Les Cruzelles and La Chenade.  Starting at just over £10 per bottle in bond, all four wines convey the winemaking brilliance of Noémie Durantou and her team.  

Once again this year, we tasted the new vintage with Noémie and her sister Constance.  Just one kilometre away from the Durantou's flagship Pomerol micro-château L'Eglise Clinet, their Lalande-de-Pomerol estate Les Cruzelles is consistently the 'finest' of the four wines, and the 2025, at just £16.50 per bottle in bond, is no exception, described by Galloni as "another stellar wine" from this estate (92-94 points).  The 'second' wine from the same estate, La Chenade scores 93-94 points from James Suckling this year, surpassing his score for Cruzelles, making it a bargain at £154 per 12 bottles.

The star of the line-up for us this year was Saintayme, which sports the addition of 20% of Cabernet Franc into the blend (for the first time, as it was so good in 2025), making an altogether more elegant wine with more complex aromatics than in previous vintages...hence its score of 94-95 points from Suckling. 

We found Montlandrie the most difficult to taste, but that may reflect the fact that the critics suggest this will need more ageing, utlimately becoming the most serious wine of the four.  So, as ever, all four wines are outstanding in their own way, and we suggest ordering more than one, so you can see for yourself!

2025 La Petite Eglise (£219 per six bottles) is also released and, whilst we enjoyed tasting it, we did not find it quite so impressive as in some previous top vintages.  Antonio Galloni and Georgina Hindle both loved it ("...this will give a lot of pleasure. A joyful wine...GH), but we think the petit châteaux offer more value this year.

Offered en primeur, landing spring 2028.

Magnums available with £25 ex-VAT bottling surcharge per six, please enquire re other formats.