Chateau Hosanna, Pomerol, 1999

An exceptionally rare opportunity to get your hands onto a bottle of this outrageously good, perfectly-cellared, mature Pomerol from one of the classic vintages of the past thirty years.

This is one of those wines that are very seldom available and that, when they are, we take immense pride in being able to offer.

Once it is gone (to very lucky customers) it will not be available again.

Hosanna had previously been known as Château Certan Guiraud until the 1998 vintage when Christian Moueix bought the estate and renamed it, using a mixture of celebration and veneration in choosing the name. Famed for power and elegance, the property fits perfectly into the mould of a Moueix Chateaux, as you'll find both characteristics in each of the wines that they make: Trotanoy, La Fleur-Petrus, Latour à Pomerol, La Grave, Lafleur-Gazin... and these are only the ones he makes in Pomerol... he also owns Napanook, Dominus and Chateau Belair-Monange.

It's a phenomenal success story that has clearly not come to an end just yet. The addition of Hosanna to the range was clearly a delight to the family as it is slap-bang in the middle of the heart of the small Pomerol appellation (get this...) bordered by Petrus, Vieux Chateau Certan, La Fleur and La Fleur-Petrus.

It's in very, very much the best of company, so you can see the "Hosanna" name being decried quite loudly, perhaps. The interesting thing is that because they have such a portfolio of wines in existence already, they have selected only the very best parcels of the Certan Guiraud incarnation to form Hosanna, meaning that production was massively reduced when they took on the winery. In practice this means only the grapes grown on the famed red gravel and clay soil of the central Pomerol plateau.

The grape makeup is Merlot and an unusually high percentage of Cabernet Franc (30%) most of which is from vines that are nearly 70 years old... The family believe that they are in possession of a wine that shows intensity, purity and balance with a silky mouthfeel that is more accessible in style than their wine from Trotanoy for example, but it is equipped with enough structure to age for decades.

Parker was a little stingy, I think, in his points awarding - possibly not wanting to be too generous in its first new-named bottling... However, the review he gave is outstanding, reckoning that it was sexy, lush, complex and perfumed Pomerol that showed saturated color as well as a "knock-out nose" of black fruits with decorative notes of menthol, leather, licorice with refined minerality, going on to describe its fleshy, silky and voluptuous texture as integral to its elegant, feminine style.

Certainly it is true that aged Pomerol is one of the best mature Bordeaux experiences you can imagine - the chances of getting them are next to finding hens' teeth.

Boxed in its case from the Chateaux, this is really something that, if we don't sell it, we'll gladly hold onto for ourselves...