2019 Vieux Chateau Mazerat Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 750 ml

It’s been almost 30 years since Jonathan Maltus, the iconoclast behind cult wine Le Dôme, first crashed the Right Bank blue-bloods’ party with a little-known tiny-production wine—one that cost far less than those luminaries. 

Maltus shows no sign of letting up. His 2019 Vieux Château Mazerat is a critical smash hit, scoring even higher than its sibling, Le Dôme, and moving in on some pretty posh labels like Château Angélus and Château La Fleur-Petrus.

From a glorious vintage, this bottling from the new member of the Right Bank elite comes in for far less than the prices of its more established neighbors.

It’s bold to try and top the greatest producers in the village, but Maltus was the guy to do it. Once described by Robert Parker as a “visionary, self-styled revolutionary” and “the English winemaking guru,” Maltus arrived in Saint-Émilion in 1994.

That year, one of three brothers who shared ownership of Vieux Château Mazerat decided to sell. Maltus snapped up the land, which neighbors Saint-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé “A” Château Angélus. He called his wine from this exceptional terroir “Le Dôme,” and 16 years later it made history, winning a 100-point score from Parker. 

Enter the phenomenal 2019 vintage. Jeb Dunnuck compared it to one of Bordeaux’s greatest seasons of all time: “There were numerous times while tasting through these 2019s that I had the impression that I was tasting a modern-day version of the 1982s. The 2019s have the ripe, sexy profiles of a warm, sunny year, yet the beautiful aromatics, terrific purity of fruit, and freshness of a cooler year,” he wrote.

The 2019 Vieux Chateau Mazerat expertly delivers all the greatness of that vintage.