2014 Chateau Duhart Milon Pauillac Moulin de Duhart 750 ml

Lafite-Rothschild’s Other Pauillac Property, Château Duhart-Milon

Today, we’re going out with Lafite’s tremendous Pauillac, the 2014 Château Duhart-Milon’s “Moulin de Duhart.” Now more than ever — after three years in bottle — this is undoubtedly one of the top 10 Bordeaux bargains of the year.

In the 2014 growing season that Wine Spectator called “a Goldilocks vintage” and which Wine Advocate argued was possibly the best since the landmark 2010, Lafite-Rothschild turned out a colossal Pauillac with a plush fruit core and stunning aromatic bouquet at its Château Duhart-Milon estate.

A solid spring and fruit set gave way to a humid summer with pockets of rain. The Bordelais prepared for another year of intense vineyard and canopy management. But unexpectedly, like Superman from the clouds, a sunny September arrived, ushering in perfect conditions and possibly setting a record as the driest, hottest September on the books. The Left Bank’s red varieties benefited the most, as grapes experienced even, slow ripening through to harvest that resulted in deeply concentrated wines.

As we continue to learn over and over again while tasting the very top wines of the vintage — particularly the 2014s from Pauillac’s superstars like Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, and Latour — it was that glorious Indian summer that really made the vintage, producing wines of rich concentration and distinguished tannic structure.  

Château Duhart-Milon — which Robert Parker hailed as “one of the stars of Pauillac thanks to the meticulous attention to detail as well as the investments made by the Rothschild family” — pulled out all the stops for its “Moulin de Duhart” release. Selected from the vats of the Grand Vin, the freshness and elegance of this bottle dropped jaws at our tasting table — and that was before we saw the price tag, a steal for a Left Bank estate of this pedigree.

Ruby-red in hue and perfectly primary on the nose, with explosive notes of blackcurrant, crushed black fruits, tobacco, graphite, and mountain blueberry. Incredibly powerful on the attack, silken in texture, yet still tightly wound and just beginning to show off the massively concentrated underpinnings.