1996 Château Camensac, 2-bottle Lot

Château Camensac is a Fifth Growth estate in St.-Laurent du Medoc, in Haut-Medoc. The 185-acre estate traces its history back centuries, but its success since the late 20th century has been due to the Forner family, which purchased the estate in 1965. The Forner brothers replanted vineyards and update the winemaking facilities. The Forners have considerable experience in the wine business since they own and run the successful Marques de Caceres winery in Rioja, Spain. Camensac grows 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot and produces nearly 300,000 bottles annually. It makes a second wine called La Closerie de Camensac at the rate of about 80,000 bottles annually. Robert M. Parker Jr. notes that the estate’s wines “possess good concentration and a straightforward, four-square style.”

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.