“I think that a great deal of happiness is given to men who were born where good wines are grown.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Which is better, having a great wine for the first time or revisiting a great wine? The answer is that each time you have a great wine, you will discover something new about it, so it is like having a wine for the first time.
51. Château Clos Fourtet, Premier Grand Cru Classé B – Limestone cave cellars beneath Saint-Émilion.
I am about to give you a true confession. I know this is an anathema to those who know me, but I promised you a confession. Alright, here it goes: I love Saint-Émilion and Pomerol, which means I love Merlot!
Saint-Émilion is a charming village with cobblestone streets and scenic views surrounded by vineyards. Clos Fourtet is a winery located directly outside the walls of the village of Saint-Émilion. It was originally built as a fort and was once a 13th-century Dominican monastery. The original structure was razed during the Hundred Years’ War.
Vines were not planted in Saint-Émilion until the 17th century. Clos Fourtet is a Right Bank vineyard, which means that the wines are predominantly Merlot. Decades of wines are stored in limestone catacombs under the vineyard. Limestone provides nutrients for the vines, and the caves create a perfect environment for aging wines. The mixture of limestone, clay, and gravelly soils affords Saint-Émilion its distinctive terroir.
Clos Fourtet’s labels have had three gold medals on the obverse side of each bottle since 1918. These awards were given in 1867 and 1900 at Paris’s Exposition Universelle. The third gold medal was earned at Bordeaux’s Exposition Nationale, Internationale et Universelle in 1895. Jean Claude Berrouet, former winemaker at Petrus, and Stéphane Derenoncourt, one of my favorite winemakers, were brought in as consultants following the vineyard’s purchase by Philippe Cuvelier in 2001. Their expertise has only enhanced the winery’s prestige. I have had Clos Fourtet many times, and they have always made outstanding wines. However, this time I was going to enjoy the wines at the vineyard.
We had a tasting of the Clos Fourtet 2014 and 2020 vintages at the vineyard. These were both excellent wines. The 2014 is a blend of 89% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 4% Cabernet Franc. If this wine were a sports car, it would be a Porsche, as it is very fast from the beginning and races to an award-winning finish. It has a perfumed bouquet with lavender, mint, raspberry, black cherry, and a distinct minerality note on the nose. The palate is replete with a silky texture of Damson plums, black cherries, cocoa, and a hint of truffle. The finish is as long as a Le Mans winner takes to bask in glory.
The 2020 vintage took the 2014 vintage and went to a higher level. Try this wine if you are curious about wines from Saint-Émilion. This wine is a true expression of Saint-Émilion. The blend is 90% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 3% Cabernet Franc, all in French oak, 50% of which is new. The 2020 is jammy and ripe and has a perfumed bouquet of red plums, black cherries, white truffles, sage, chocolate, and white flowers on the nose. The palate is medium to full-bodied and rocks the minerality (please forgive me).
This was 2022. We drank this wine much too young, and yet it was amazing. Resist the urge to drink this wine now. Age the 2020 vintage, as I can only imagine what it would be like in 10 years. I discovered nuances to Clos Fourtet that I had not experienced before. It is good to revisit an old friend.
52. Château Prieuré-Lichine – A lovely wine with a delicious lunch.
We went to the beautiful Château Prieuré-Lichine vineyard in Margaux for lunch. I had never had Prieuré-Lichine, but this was going to be a treat if the wine was as beautiful as the vineyard.
Prieuré-Lichine was classified as a Quatrièmes Crus (Fourth Growth) in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. It is unfortunate that the 1855 classification is not updated (the 1973 inclusion of Château Mouton Rothschild as the fifth Premier Grand Cru Classé is the exception). A glancing look at the term “Fourth Growth” may lead one to think that the wine is plonk. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fourth Growth wines include Châteaux Talbot, Branaire-Ducru, Beychevelle, and Duhart-Milon-Rothschild, amongst others. This places Château Prieuré-Lichine in very good company.
Château Prieuré-Lichine is in Margaux in the village of Cantenac, which means it is a Left Bank wine and predominantly a Cabernet Sauvignon varietal. Monks of the Abbey of Vertheuil from the Priory of Cantenac founded the winery in the 10th century during the Roman times. The vineyard belonged to the Church until the French Revolution.
It was in this charming setting that we had lunch at the Château. Lunch was paired with Prieuré-Lichine three different vintages. I learned that Prieuré-Lichine had hired Michel Rolland as a consultant and followed that by hiring Stéphane Derenoncourt as its consulting oenologist. This means the wines had to be good. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if they had hired Heidi Barrett.
Prieuré-Lichine is a wine you would want to select if you wanted to have an idea of what to expect from a wine from Margaux. We got to taste the 2006, 2010, and 2016 vintages. It is frequently said that New World wines are meant to be enjoyed by themselves, whereas Old World wines are meant to enhance the food you are eating. This was very true in this instance. Each wine enveloped and enriched the food.
The 2016 vintage had a deep garnet-purple color. It had little rim variation. The perfumed nose was replete with floral, blackcurrants, black raspberries, cedar, tobacco, and herbaceous scents. The palate was concentrated, with cherries, cassis, and other dark fruits. It had firm tannins and medium to full acidity and a medium finish. I spent quite a bit of time rolling the wine over my tongue, enjoying it for the first time.
The 2010 vintage was very different from the 2016. The extra bottle aging benefited the 2010. This wine had a pronounced rim variation over a purple color. There were notes of leather, tobacco, and sous-bois on the nose, with secondary notes of black licorice and stewed red and black fruits. The wine had notes of cedar wood, smoke, baking spices, and anise over-ripe dark fruits on the palate. This wine spent 16 months in new French oak, and it shows. The tannins were sweet, and the acidity was medium, leading to a prolonged finish.
The oldest of the three wines was the 2006 vintage. As the 2010 differed from the 2016 vintage, this wine was the third leg to the stool. The wine was opaque in color yet had clear rim variation showing its age. The nose had pronounced aromas of dark fruits, cedar, tobacco leaf, floral, white truffle, sous-bois, leather, mocha, and vanilla. The palate showed dark fruits, bell pepper, black olive tapenade, spice, oak, vanilla, smoke, toast, tar, lead, cedar, and dark molasses.
I bounced between the three wines, cleansing my palate and tasting every forkful with each wine. I love it when I am introduced to a new wine. Lunch was superb, and it was made better by concluding it with Domaine Tariquet Bas-Armagnac XO Armagnac. The minimum age for bottling Armagnac is 10 years. However, this Armagnac was bottled for 15 years. This was a memorable lunch, I was introduced to a new wine, and you could not beat the setting. What is better than that?
Santé!
