Château du Tertre Grand Cru Classe Margaux 2011

Château du Tertre Grand Cru Classe Margaux 2011

With left over grilled ribeye beefsteak from the other night, I opened this classic Left Bank Bordeaux for dinner food and wine pairing. 

Château du Tertre is a Fifth Growth property in Margaux, one of the oldest properties not just in Margaux, but in the entire Left Bank dating back to 1143. The name, “Tertre,” refers to its geography, the word tertre means, “hill,” or, “rising ground," referring to the location, a couple km inland from the Gironde River estuary, the Margaux terroirs there are the highest, with one of the most elevated gravel outcrops of the Médoc.

The estate sits in the hamlet of Arsac, where it has historically been called “beautiful Tertre d’Arsac”, just 4 km south of the Chambres de Margaux in the Margaux village centre where we stayed during our Margaux Bordeaux region tour in 2019,  just a 1/2 km south of the village perimeter. 

The footprint of the 52 hectares, 125 acres of vineyards, has not changed much since the 1855 Classification when it was designated Margaux Grand Cru Classe. The graveled, sloping soils are planted to customary Bordeaux varietals - Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, with the majority of the vines planted near an ambient forest, which yields cooler temperatures and preserves the freshness of the wines.

The estate began to rise to prominence in the 1700's, when it was owned Pierre Mitchell of Bordeaux, known as a famous glassblower. Mitchell was known to have created the first jeroboam (a five liter bottle), and given his expertise in crafting glass bottles, it is likely that the first wines in Bordeaux were bottled at Château du Tertre.  

The Château du Tertre estate was very popular with the Dutch wine market and was acquired by Henri de Koenigswarter from the Netherlands before being taken over by the Cruse family, a famous négociant, in the 1900s.  

During the turbulent disruption of World War II, the estate fell into disrepair and its sterling reputation declined as a result. 

In 1961, the property was acquired by Philippe Gasqueton, the well-known owner of Château Calon Ségur in Saint Estèphe, who embarked on the long, intensive process of turning the estate around.  

1n 1997, Dutch businessman, Eric Albada Jelgersma bought the estate and invested in the large-scale overall restructuring, returning its former noble personality to the Chateau du Tertre. Since March 2021 the Helfrich family has taken over the property with the intent to continuing the tradition and pursuit of excellence.

The viticultural team is headed by Alexander Van Beek, who made some critical changes such as eliminating machine harvesting.  Frédéric Ardouin from Château Latour was hired as Technical Director and winemaker in 2008, and the property has been on the rise ever since with biodynamic transformation of the viticulture and rebuilding of the production facilities with new technology. Château du Tertre wines are known to be versatile, able to be enjoyed younger with one to two hours decanting and show improvement with 10 years of bottle age. 

 

Château du Tertre Grand Cru Classe Margaux 2011

 

This release was awarded 92 points by Wine Enthusiast and Jane Anson of Decanter.com, 91 points by James Suckling, 90 points by Wine Spectator, and 88 points by Robert Parker Jr., The Wine Advocate.

 

Dense dark garnet purple colored, medium bodied, floral notes with black berry fruits with notes of anise, black tea, earth and leather with supple tannins and well behaved acidity on the finish. 

RM 90 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1362619 

http://chateaudutertre.fr/en/home/

 

https://twitter.com/tertre_gcc 

 

@Tertre_gcc

Château Haut-Batailley Pauillac Bordeaux 2003

Château Haut-Batailley Pauillac Bordeaux 2003

Wine buddy and fellow Pour Boy Bill brought this Grand Cru Classe Bordeaux from his cellar in South Carolina for a wine dinner following our extraordinary dinner and wine flight last evening. This was a great comparison tasting opposite the just released 2018 vintage of Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

Château Haut-Batailley is another property of the legendary Borie family, one of the oldest wine producing families in Bordeaux who also own Château Ducru-Beaucaillou. Our visit to the Borie family owned classic second growth Ducru-Beaucaillou estate was one of the highlights of our trip to the Medoc last year. 

Bill brought this label to another wine dinner tasting we held three years ago. At that time I wrote that this wine as probably at the apex of its drinking window, not likely to improve further with aging. While that may be the case, it certainly is holding its own and showed very well again tonight, perhaps better than our earlier tasting, exceeding my expectations for what I was expecting from this label and vintage release. 

Bill's Cellartracker notes from the earlier tasting summed it up well - "Medium garnet with a slight touch of brown at the edges. Earthy nose with the slightest hint of lilac. A bit tight upon opening but within 20 minutes, began to reveal cassis, dark chocolate, a bit of moss and just a hint of mint."

Like our earlier tasting experience, this opened with wonderful Bordeaux aromas of earthy leather, dark fruits and floral but was firm and tight with a moderate gripping tannin backbone - yet smooth and polished rather than overbearing. We set it aside and let it open and breath for a bit which it did so very nicely over the course of the evening. It showed equally well if not better the next evening as we enjoyed the remains of the bottle.

Dark garnet colored, medium full bodied, complex black fruits with tones of cassis, floral, earthy leather, tobacco and oak, hints of spice and graphite with smooth polished dusty tannins on the lingering finish.

RM 91 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=61279

https://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2017/02/freemark-abbey-cuvaison-haut-batailley.html

Châteaux Clerc Milon and d'Armailhac Pauillacs

Duo of Château Clerc Milon and Château d'Armailhac Pauillacs for grilled tenderloin dinner

Hosting colleague Jeff from Seattle, Linda prepared grilled beef tenderloin with baked potatoes, fried mushrooms and onions. Touring our wine cellar, Jeff requested Bordeaux to accompany our dinner so I pulled two Pauillacs, Clerc Milon and d'Armailhac adjacent and affiliated properties from two disparate vintages for the occasion.

We toured the region during our Bordeaux Medoc Wine Experience 2019 last summer and drove around the Paulliac appellation to see the Baron Philippe de Rothschild properties, Mouton Rothschild, Clerc Milon and d'Armailhac.

Château Clerc Milon Cinquieme Grand Cru Classe (5me cru classé ~ Fifth Growth) Pauillac Bordeaux 1989

At three decades, this was showing its age in the color and opacity as it was starting to take on a slight grayish hue. The foil and label were pristine and the fill level was ideal. The cork however turned out to be partially saturated and loose providing a challenge to extract. I was able to successfully do so using an Ahso two pronged cork puller. Had one applied a traditional cork screw, it would have most assuredly pushed the cork into the bottle. Even inserting the Ahso did so and it took considerable effort and multiple attempts to insert the prongs. Extracting the cork also took considerable effort as it crumbled apart as it was coming out.

Time to drink as this is past its prime and starting to wane. 

The 1989 vintage was a great year with a warm spring and early flowering followed by heat throughout the summer, leading to Clerc-Milon's earliest harvest of the twentieth century to that point.

The resulting Clerc-Milon was on par with the premier first growth flagship Mouton-Rothschild and even preferred by Robert Parker for the first time in his many years as a critic resulting a great value in comparison

The 1989 Clerc-Milon is 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, and 10% Cabernet Franc.

This vintage Clerc Milon was rated 93 points by Wine Spectator, 91-93 points by Neal Martin's Wine Journal and 90 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate.

Garnet colored with a slight gray hue, medium-full bodied, earthy nose, dense, concentrated ripe black plum and currant fruits with forest floor, leather, hints of smoke with smooth supple full round tannins on the long full finish.

RM 90 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2898

Château d'Armailhac Cinquieme Grand Cru Classe (5me cru classé ~ Fifth Growth) Pauillac Bordeaux 2016

From the same ownership, Château d'Armailhac is another label in the family of brands of Baron Philippe de Rothschild 2016 sourced from near contiguous properties just outside the village of Pauillac in the northern Medoc.

The 2016 is a blend of 62% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. 

This release got 95 points from James Suckling, 94 points from Jeb Dunnuck, 93 points from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, Vinous and Decanter and 90 points from Wine Enthusiast. 

Vinous says "This fulfills all my expectations and is quite simply one of the best d’Armailhac wines ever made."

Dark, deep bright garnet purple colored, medium full-bodied, firm, structured and concentrated bright floral, vibrant fruits of blackberry and plums  with tones of violets, graphite, cassis, tea, earthy cedar and earthy notes of herbal nuances with firm, gripping tannins on a long earthy finish. Needs some time to integrate and settle.

RM 91 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2352929

 

Dinesite London 34 Mayfair for classy business wine dinner

Dinesite London 34 Mayfair for classy business wine dinner

For a team dinner upon our first and only night in London, we dined across Grosvenor Square from our hotel at 34 Mayfair Restaurant in the shadow of the old US Embassy, now being completely renovated into a chic upscale hotel.

34 Mayfair is trendy, cosmopolitan, chic and vibrant with a steak and seafood menu and a superb upscale winelist – ideal for our team dinner the night before our UK customer roundtable.

Normally, I would opt for Dover sole, especially on this side of the pond, but I was intrigued by the Saltcoats Scottish beef steak, especially when colleague Alastair shared with us that it was raised from where his ‘mum’ hails, hence we opted for the local fare – each of us in the bone in ribeye (shown).

For the entrée course we ordered from the winelist a Bordeaux Grand Cru Classe which proved to be a perfect complement to our steak dinner selections.

Château Quinault L'Enclos St Emilion Grand Cru Classe 2012

We have tasted this wine at the UGCB annual release tour on several occasions and hold several vintages of this label dating back to 2003. This vintage release adorns a different new branding label from our older vintages, which apparently was changed around the 2009 vintage.

This was more forward, expressive and vibrant than I ever remember for this label.

This was bright ruby colored, medium full bodied, nicely integrated and balanced, bright vibrant forward fruits of black berry, black currant, spice, notes of oak and a layer of tangy cherry on the pronounced tannin finish.

RM 91 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1605570

Chapoutier and Laughton La Pléîade Heathcote Shiraz 2013 

For our dessert course, I was intrigued by and selected this Heathcote Shiraz, from Victoria Australia, partly due to the notable well known Rhone producer Michel Chapoutier, and this wine's Australian origin, and the distinctive creative label branding. I was previously not aware of an Australian offering from Michel Chapoutier. 

This particular label is named after the celestial constellation Pléîade, which adorns the front label solely, sans any other markings or information, save a couple wine blots. 

La Pléiade is a collaborative effort between Michel and Corrine Chapoutier and Ron and Eva Laughton. Their intent was to make a terroir driven wine out of simple land right on a clay fault in Australia. In 1990, the idea of terroir was new to that continent. 

A former food scientist, Ron Laughton and his wife Elva created their Jasper Hill estate in Heathcote, Victoria in 1975 (70 miles north of Melbourne), drawn by the region’s distinctive geology, namely an iron-rich seam of Cambrian clay on which the vineyards are strategically located.

According to the rear label, the partnership between Michael and Corrine Chapoutier and Ron and Elva Laughton is imported into the UK by Yapp Brothers Ltd, yapp.co.uk, so it is not necessarily available in the US, hence an interesting find to taste when the chance presents itself.

This may have been produced with the British or European palette in mind. At 14.0% alcohol it was much more tame and subdued than many of the big Aussie Shiraz’s imported into the US to a market favoring big bold concentrated and firmly structured fruit forward and high alcohol content wines.

Ron Laughton has a longstanding friendship with Michel Chapoutier who formed this joint venture vineyard planted with a mixture of Heathcote Shiraz and Hermitage Syrah in 1998. The resultant wine was called 'La Pleiade', named after the constellation visible from both hemispheres.

The partnership between Michel Chapoutier from France's Rhone region and Ron Laughton of the Heathcote estate, Jasper Hill was founded in 1997. Their first vintage release was in 2003. Initially called "Cambrian," "Cluster M45" is now the U.S. label for this wine, known as "La Pleiade" elsewhere. It is made from 100% Shiraz from a 20-acre single vineyard just south of Jasper Hill's Georgia's Paddock, which is planted with a 50/50 mix of vines taken from Jasper Hill and Chapoutier's vineyards (imported from France). 

 

This was garnet colored, but medium bodied with black berry fruits with notes of spices and hints of tea, leather, tobacco leaf and mineral on the moderate finish.

 

RM 89 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=1831985