What do a pencil, an expresso and a bowl of fresh berries have to do with today’s featured wine?
The answer will be immediately evident the moment you pull the cork from a bottle of the 2008 Chateau Cordet Margaux! This is an exuberant 2008 Bordeaux, offering up heaps of fresh crushed berry fruit, wonderful minerality (reminiscent of a freshly sharpened pencil) and subtle coffee notes imparted by aging of this wine in barrel before release.
Bordeaux is an important starting place for any serious wine collector. For less than $35 dollars per bottle, this is a perfect wine to pick up today and enjoy over the next 3-5 years.
Tune into the video edition of our Wine of the Week:
This wine is available now at LCBO Vintages shops across Ontario. To find this wine at a shop near you, simply click here.
Three things to know about how the grapes for this wine were grown:
#1: Unlike other parts of Bordeaux’s left bank where we find a higher content of clay in the soils, the soils in Margaux have more gravel and stones, allowing the vine roots to grow deeper into the earth.
#2: Chateau Cordet is a small estate of only 6 hectares. This small production ensures attention to detail and allows for the use of classic “handcrafted” methods.
#3: The vineyards at Chateau Cordet average 25 years of age. The mature vines offer superior ripeness and complexity in the resulting grapes and wines.
Three things to know about how this wine was made:
#1: The 2008 vintage/harvest was rated 90 points by Robert Parker. It is characterized by generous fruit and a somewhat early maturing style. This is a wine you can enjoy today, or lay down for 3-5 years.
#2: Fermentation was drawn out over 21 days and this wine spent 20 months aging in barrel before release.
#3: The reds of Margaux are a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Cabernet Sauvignon is the king of grapes in this region and makes up 60% of the blend in the 2008 Chateau Cordet.
Tasting Notes:
“My only note from this estate, the 2008 Château Cordet acquits itself beautifully as a round, elegant, and harmonious Margaux. Dark ruby in colour, the wine is finely toasted, revealing attractively fragrant aromas of raspberried currants and plums, graphite, underbrush, mild grilled herbs, and a hint of earth and spice. Complex, possessing very fine, elegant silky fruit, firm tannins, balanced acidity, and a refined hint of raspberried currants and plums on the finish. For claret collectors, this is a very worthy purchase. 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, and 20% Cabernet Franc. Now-2017+”
90/100 Points
Julian Hitner (The Successful Collector) – WineAlign.com
“This blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc and 20% Merlot wakes the nose with expressive coffee notes, wrapped in suggestions of cassis, plum, blueberry and herbs. The palate is quite complex, dry and medium bodied, with more rich coffee (dare we say it’s good to the last drop?), smoke, cassis and a lifted raspberry haracter, all leading to a lingering finish. A fine example of the flavour-packed wines to be found from Bordeaux’s 2008 vintage.”
LCBO Vintages Tasting Panel
Food Pairings:
This fine 2008 Margaux will pair wonderfully with a variety of red meats – everything from lamb to beef or game. Try this wine next to beef tenderloin or your favourite selection of fuller flavoured cheeses.
Andrew Hanna is a third generation wine importer and Director of Sales & Marketing at John Hanna & Sons Ltd., one of Canada’s oldest independent wine merchants. He spends his days scouring the earth for handcrafted wines that tell a story about the people and places in each bottle, while sharing these delicious discoveries with wine lovers across Canada.
~
~
CONNECT:
