1999 Château Rouget, 1.5ltr

Château Rouget is in Pomerol on the Right Bank of the Gironde River. The 45-acre estate was owned by the mayor of Pomerol in the early 19th century. After several changes in ownership it is today owned by the Labruyere family of Beaujolais, who use the consulting services of celebrated winemaker Michel Rolland. The Labruyere family also owns one of the oldest wineries in the Moulin-a-Vent appellation. Château Rouget grows 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc. Some 6,500 cases are produced annually and the second wine is Le Carillon de Rouget. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written that “there is no question that Rouget can be a rich and interesting wine.”

Pomerol is the smallest of Bordeaux’s red wine producing regions, with only about 2,000 acres of vineyards. Located on the east side of the Dordogne River, it is one of the so-called “right bank” appellations and therefore planted primarily to Merlot. Pomerol is unique in Bordeaux in that it is the only district never to have been rated in a classification system. Some historians think Pomerol’s location on the right bank made it unattractive to Bordeaux-based wine traders, who had plenty of wine from Medoc and Graves to export to England and northern Europe. Since ranking estates was essentially a marketing ploy to help brokers sell wine, ranking an area where they did little business held no interest for them. Pomerol didn’t get much attention from the international wine community until the 1960s, when Jean-Pierre Moueix, an entrepreneurial wine merchant, started buying some of Pomerol’s best estates and exporting the wines. Today the influential Moueix family owns Pomerol’s most famous estate, Château Pétrus, along with numerous other Pomerol estates. Pomerol wines, primarily Merlot blended with small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, are considered softer and less tannic than left bank Bordeaux.