Wine Advocate 95 points.
The 2021 Canon opens in the glass with a pure bouquet of raspberries, cherries and plums mingled with pretty top notes of iris, licorice, mint and sweet spices. Medium to full-bodied, deep and layered, it's fleshy and sensual, with a deep and seamless core of fruit framed by ultra-refined tannins, a bright spine of acidity and a long, mineral finish. With an impressively low finished pH of 3.37, it was taken out of barrel a month earlier than usual and saw no fining—as has been the case since 2010.
In the last few years, this sleeping giant has well and truly reawakened, and the 2021 vintage represents another fine success for Nicolas Audebert and his team. Extensive replanting between 1996 and 2003, overseen by Audebert's predecessor, John Kolasa, saw some 50% of the estate's 22 hectares replaced. The fact that these vines are now arriving at full maturity surely goes some way to accounting for Canon's contemporary renaissance. Now, the team is working on restructuring the rest, combining massal selections and clones. Viticulture is thoughtful, with cover crops across the estate, and the terroir itself is relatively homogeneous: solid limestone covered by some 0.25 to 0.7 meters of clay, with a more or less uniform exposition on Saint-Émilion's plateau. There's also one small parcel in the town itself and another by Berliquet. Today, the vineyard is planted with about 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet Franc, and there are no plans to radically alter that. Winemaking privileges finesse over power, though a certain richness and texture can be taken for granted with a site like this, and maturation is in 50% new oak (mostly from Taransaud, Demptos, Sylvain and Quintessence).
Published: Feb 09, 2024.
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