2010 Château Cos d'Estournel St.-Estèphe 750 ml

On our summer trip to Bordeaux last year, it was this wine, the 2010 Cos d’Estournel, that we were most eager to secure. It took five months, countless emails, and two dozen phone calls to secure this stellar library release—direct from the château cellars, with guaranteed perfect provenance. 

Our persistence last year is paying off big time now: The estate has re-released this stunning wine, and we were their first call in 2020. Today, we have another ten cases to share. This is a rare opportunity from a banner year in Bordeaux, and we don’t expect it to come again.

The 2010 Cos d’Estournel is a wine that competes with the great First Growths of Bordeaux: Powerful aromas of blackberry, cassis, violets, and beautifully integrated new-wood cedar tinged with fennel spice and black licorice leap from the glass. Generous, with concentrated dark plum and sweet black raspberry fruits that glow next to a kaleidoscope of dried violets, bittersweet baking chocolate, espresso, graphite, and crushed rocks on the palate. It’s texturally massive, with huge but polished tannins, firm acidity, and an astounding finish—something you see in only the greatest wines of the world. 

One thing has changed since our last offer: Just this spring, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate re-tasted the spectacular wine, and elevated it to a near-perfect 99-point score, putting in the company of $500 Château Angelus and $1200 Haut-Brion. Just more proof that there’s no line between Cos d’Estournel and the unquestioned best of Bordeaux.

We first discovered this wine during a tasting with then-managing director Jean-Guillaume Prats back in 2012, and after another eight years of slumber it has only developed more of its hallmark complexity, and irresistible spicy undertones on the palate. 

When Bruno Prats and his brothers gained control of the estate 1970, Cos d’Estournel began its ascent into the stratosphere of the wine world. With Bruno’s son Jean-Guillaume following in his father’s famous footsteps, the Prats family guided operations at the 224-acre estate for more than 40 years. Today, this St-Estèphe estate is firmly established as one of the “Super Seconds” of the Médoc, and those seeking a perfect encapsulation of its top-tier quality need taste no further than the 2010 Cos d’Estournel. It’s the last vintage Jean-Guillaume oversaw from vine to bottle, from a year when Robert Parker found Cos to be “at the very top of its game.”

Before he left the estate in 2012 (to take the reins at Lafite-Rothschild), Jean-Guillaume got to see a dream he inherited from his father made real at Cos d’Estournel. Michel Reybier bought the estate in 2000, and then the Dutch magnate poured a fortune into overhauling and updating. An ultra-modern winemaking facility was constructed, with all movement of wine gently facilitated by a completely gravity-fed system. Some 72 different fermentation tanks were installed, so that separate lots from the estate could be tracked meticulously through fermentation and beyond. 

In 2010, an extraordinarily high percentage (78%) of late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon, grown on perfectly exposed south- and east-facing slopes, directly adjacent to the Pauillac First Growth Lafite-Rothschild, was blended with 19% Merlot and trace amounts of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. In the exceptional 2010 vintage, Cos d’Estournel saw 80% new oak, and was produced in the state-of-the-art facility at Cos.

But for all this attention in the vineyard and winery, the best wines can only achieve their potential in the best vintages. With a harmonious balance of ripe fruit, minerality, and earthiness, 2010 will appeal to all, and especially to lovers of classically framed Claret.