Château Alcée 2022

Château Alcée is a small Bordeaux estate producing wines in the classic Right Bank tradition - 100% Merlot for this vintage, and built with genuine care rather than commercial ambition. The 2022 vintage was one of the warmest and driest on record in Bordeaux, producing wines of concentration and ripeness without sacrificing freshness, and Alcée has made the most of it: dark fruit, a firm tannic backbone, and the kind of mineral grip that suggests real character in the glass. Alcée is the pet project of widely-celebrated winemaker Nicolas Thienpont (of Pavie-Macquin fame especially, one of 2021's wines of the vintage), so it's not a huge surprise to see the wine perform at this level quality, though you still rarely expect to see this in Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux. Nicolas has sought to push quality further and further, converting to organic farming, replanting vines, reducing yields and delaying harvesting until optimum phenolic ripeness. Winemaking is similarly assiduous, with laser-sharp selection at the sorting table and plot-by-plot vinification.