2024 Alter Ego de Palmer

The second wine of Palmer, the 2024 Château Palmer Alter Ego is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot, and 6% Petit Verdot. Juicy cassis, black cherries, sappy herbs, and floral violet notes all shine in the aromatics. It's medium-bodied on the palate, with juicy acidity, solid tannins, and a good finish. It shows the more mid-weight style of the vintage and shines for its purity. In some vintages, I'd be nervous identifying the Grand Vin and Alter Ego blind, as they can be that close. That's not the case in 2024, where it plays the role of a true second wine.

The 2024 Alter Ego de Palmer is a lovely wine, bursting with aromas of blackcurrants, plums, rose petals and violets. Medium to full-bodied, supple and lively, with a sweet core of fruit, ripe tannins and impressive richness for the vintage, it's a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot.

Finessed aromatics, clear stone fruits, cherry pit, even touch of sage and juicy nectarine among the more classical cassis and blackberry fruits, this is sappy, slate, gunsmoke, good balance with salinity on the finish, enjoyable. 22hl/h yield, mainly from poor fruit set on the old Merlots, so both wines have majority Cabernet Sauvignon. Harvest 25 September to 10 October, 3.7ph. One to look out for, and no need to wait too long.