2015 Saint-Jacques de Siran

Château Siran is in the southern part of the Margaux appellation. The 60-acre estate has been owned and operated by the Miailhe family since 1859. Today it is operated by Edouard Miailhe. The estate is a Cru Bourgeois, though Robert M. Parker Jr. has called Château Siran “the equivalent of a fifth growth in its finest vintages.” Vineyards are planted to 43% merlot, 38% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Petit Verdot and 7% Cabernet Franc. About 100,000 bottles are produced annually. The second label is S de Siran, and the estate also makes an AOC Bordeaux Superior called Saint Jacques de Siran. Parker has noted that Siran is “making consistently delicious, fragrant, deeply colored wines that are frequently on a quality level with a Medoc fifth growth.”

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.