2022 Chateau Canon Saint Emilion Grand Cru

~ #63 Top 100 French Wines of 2025 by James Suckling

Ripe black cherries, graphite, crushed stone, and a beautiful floral character all define the 2022 Chateau Canon, another brilliantly pure and seamless wine from this team. Based on 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Franc, it was raised in 50% new French oak, with a small percentage in foudre. Medium to full-bodied, it’s focused and precise on the palate, with ripe, polished tannins, integrated acidity, and a gorgeous finish. The elegance and purity here are truly striking, and it brings that rare mix of power and elegance. This sensational Saint-Émilion should evolve gracefully for three decades. In my view, it’s the finest Canon ever, surpassing the 2009, 2010, 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2020. ~100 Jeb Dunnuck

~100 Adrian van Velsen - vvWine.ch & VINUM

From an estate that is delivering its greatest run of vintages since the superb Post War series that preceded the frosts of 1956, the 2022 Canon is a magical wine that will be worth every effort to track down. Wafting from the glass with aromas of dark berries, wild plums and cherries mingled with hints of bay leaf, spices and violets, it's full-bodied, layered and multidimensional, with huge levels of concentration, vibrant acids and beautifully refined tannins. Concluding with a long, saline finish, this pure, perfumed and ineffably complete Canon is built for the ages, even if its structural polish is such that it will be approachable at a surprisingly early age. ~100 WA

Aromatically, the wine pops with its floral bouquet coupled with notes of mint, crushed stones, red fruits, licorice, spice, and wild cherries. On the palate, the wine is perfectly poised with elegance, finesse, silky, freshness, sexiness, sensuality, and a tannic structure allowing the wine to age and evolve for 4-5 decades with ease. From start to finish, the fruits display a remarkable sense of purity with a salt-tinted edge in the finish. There are no hard edges. The finish is seamless. This is a beauty! Drink from 2029-2065. ~99 The Wine Cellar Insider

Endless on the palate with plenty of umami character. So Canon in its nature with plenty of fruit and fine tannins, yet almost weightless. The structure is all there. Electric. Long, long, long. 75% merlot and 25% cabernet franc. ~99 JS

The 2022 Canon is elegant and sensual, with virtually no sensation of tannin. A wine with no beginning and end, Canon is totally seamless. All the Canon signatures are there, but woven together in an effortless, gracious expression of this site. It's the sort of wine that is about subtlety and nuance more than power. Dark red/purplish fruit, lavender, rose petal and spice caress the palate, but ultimately, Canon is above all else a wine of exquisite detail. Haute couture. Tasted three times. ~99 AG-VM

A superb Canon in 2022. Supple, shiny, oh so charming, gorgeously sleek and well textured like pure silk but with density to the tannins that grips and coats the mouth, plus you know there's such power and concentration underneath in the waves of liquorice, stones, blackcurrant fruit. Extremely polished and charming. Vibrant, energetic, tense, and straight. It's not plush, more direct, but this wine thrills. Seamless and effortless, bright and energetic but with such a calm control and confidence. A stunning wine more for what it doesn't say than what it does in 2022. A yield of 45hl/ha. pH 3.5. 18 months ageing with 50% new oak. Harvest 30 August - 22 September. ~98 Decanter