1996 Château Cantemerle

Château Cantemerle is a Fifth Growth estate near the the village of Macau, in the Haut-Medoc appellation of France’s Bordeaux region. The 214-acre estate has been the site of grape growing and winemaking since the 14th century. It was owned by a succession of prominent French families until 1981, when it was sold to SMABTP Group, an international firm that sells insurance to the construction and building industries. Cantemerle’s vineyards are planted to 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 5% each Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Some 350,000 bottles are produced annually. The second wine is Les Allees de Cantemerle.

Bordeaux is the world’s most famous fine-wine producing region. Even non-wine drinkers recognize the names of Bordeaux’s celebrated wines, such as Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild. Located near the Atlantic coast in southwest France, the region takes its name from the seaport city of Bordeaux, a wine trading center with an outstanding site on the Garonne River and easy access to the Atlantic. Like most French wine regions, Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, then tended by medieval monks. Aristocrats and nobility later owned the region’s best estates and today estates are owned by everyone from non-French business conglomerates to families who have been proprietors for generations. Bordeaux has nearly 280,000 acres of vineyards, 57 appellations and 10,000 wine-producing châteaux. Bordeaux is bifurcated by the Gironde Estuary into so-called “right bank” and “left bank” appellations. Bordeaux’s red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. It also makes white wines of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. There are several classification systems in Bordeaux. All are attempts to rank the estates based on the historic quality of the wines.