2002 Château Gigault

Château Gigault is a 33-acre estate in Mazion, in Premieres Cotes de Blaye, on the east bank of the Gironde River. Though the estate dates to the 18th century, it was purchased in 1998 by Christophe Reboul Salze and well-known wine consultant Stephane Derenoncourt was brought in to steer winemaking. The estate’s flagship wine is the Cuvee Viva, a Merlot-based blend with an annual production of nearly 4,000 cases. The second wine is Château Gigault. Robert M. Parker Jr. has called the estate “one of the best run in the Cotes de Blaye (and) has been consistently excellent over the last decade.”

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.