2019 Liber Pater Denarius Graves

No longer does the most expensive wine in the world come from French Burgundy, but from the Bordeaux region. It is the Liber Pater, which still exceeds the Romanée Conti in price. Loïc Pasquet, the Bordeaux winegrower behind Liber Pater has released a new label, Denarius. “I wanted to make something affordable,” Pasquet says ironically. While it has no intention of surpassing Domaine La Romanée Conti in terms of awards, it is still ahead of the 1855-classified First Growths. “Liber Pater is extremely expensive and rare. Denarius places wines from its own rootstocks on the tables of French restaurants. This is actually very affordable to be able to taste pre-phylloxera wine,” Pasquet explains, making these wines as they used to be made with vines from the same era. He returns to the roots of the Bordeaux wine region and then to the mid-19th century with peaks towards the 1850s and does so by using old vineyard management techniques (mixed crops and trained vines, tillage with a mule , organic sprays and very high planting densities of 20,000 vines/ha) along with extremely old original vines. Liber Pater claims to provide the historic taste of Bordeaux wines.

The Denarius is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot but made from extremely old vines in a way that was done in the past. Everything by hand and extremely scarce. Both in the nose and in the mouth, the wine is soft, elegant and fruity with very nice ripe fruit and lots of character of raspberry, blackberry and dark chocolate. Full and velvety textured in a very juicy style. The wine is still so new that we can only take a shot at the storage potential, but we recommend that you only taste this wine around 2021 and it will last for decades. If what happens to the Denarius happens to what happened to the Liber Prater, then this is also a tip from an investment point of view. So if you want to drink a Bordeaux in the style of 150 years ago and not spend 30,000 euros for a bottle, this is the second best option. Only in the top years around 250 boxes are made. The 2019 is the successor to 2018 (before this was the 2018) and will only be available around March 2022.