1972 Petrus, Pomerol · Two Bottles with Free Overnight Shipping

Two bottles, sold together. Free next-day air.

A matched pair of 1972 Petrus from the same private cellar, kept together since purchase. One to open, one to keep, or two for a table that will remember it.

What the 1972 actually is

1972 was a poor year in Bordeaux. Cold spring, cold and wet August, harvest pushed back to 7 October. Petrus made a creditable wine in a washed-out vintage, which is the most anyone claims for it. Jancis Robinson tasted it in 2013 and found it pale ruby with brown at the rim, wonderfully perfumed and heady on the nose, then light-bodied and gently fading on the palate. John Kapon, tasting a full Petrus vertical, scored it 86.

This is a bottle bought for the label and the year, not for the liquid, and the market prices it that way. We would rather say so plainly than sell you a story.

Where these bottles came from

We do not buy old Bordeaux on the open market. Bottles like this reach us through private collectors we know personally, people who bought long ago and cellared properly ever since. Both bottles were inspected in person before we took them and have been in temperature-controlled storage since. On a wine of this age and this name, provenance is most of the value.

The details

• Producer: Petrus (Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix)
• Appellation: Pomerol, Bordeaux, France
• Classification: none. Pomerol has never been classified
• Vintage: 1972
• Grapes: predominantly Merlot. See the note below on the blend.
• Format: two 750ml bottles
• Shipping: free next-day air, signature required
• Drinking window: now, fully mature

A note on the blend

Petrus is 100% Merlot today, and you will see that stated for every vintage on plenty of retail sites. It was not always true. Under Madame Loubat the vineyard carried close to 20% Cabernet Franc, and the Moueix team only began shifting the plantings decisively toward Merlot around 1970. By the 1990s the Cabernet Franc was down to about half a hectare, and today it is gone entirely.

So in 1972 there was real Cabernet Franc in the ground. Whether any of it went into the wine is a separate question, and the estate has never published the blend for this vintage. Petrus has historically used its Cabernet Franc only in very ripe years, and 1972 was a cold, wet one. We are not going to tell you this is 100% Merlot, and we are not going to tell you it is a blend. Nobody outside the château knows.

Serving

Stand upright for two days. Decant gently off the sediment no more than twenty minutes before serving. A wine this old gives you a window rather than an evening.

About the estate

Madame Edmond Loubat bought into Petrus in 1923 and was sole owner by 1929. Jean-Pierre Moueix took the distribution contract in the 1940s and acquired the remaining shares in 1964. Jean-Claude Berrouet directed the winemaking from 1964 to 2008, forty-four consecutive vintages. The vineyard is eleven and a half hectares on a buttonhole of dense blue clay roughly forty million years old, the geological accident that makes Petrus what it is.

One pair available, shipped from our Florida cellar. Browse more rare and limited vintages.