1996 Château Charmail, 375ml

Château Charmail is a Cru Bourgeois, according to the 1932 classification of the Medoc’s Bourgeois chateaux. Located in St.-Seurin-de-Cadourne, the 55 acres of vineyards overlook the Gironde. Owner Bernard d’Halluin purchased the estate in 2008 from Olivier Sèze, a well-known figure in the Médoc. A trained agronomist, Sèze remains as the estate’s director, and he has a reputation of keeping up the newest viticultural methods and he has turned to such practices as what he calls “pre-fermentation” and “cold maceration” to fine tune the quality of wines. And he has been successful. Robert M. Parker Jr. has called Charmail wines “revolutionary in their fruit intensity and richness for Haut-Medoc.” Vineyards are planted to 50% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petite Verdot. About 120,000 bottles are produced annually.

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.