- And The Top Producers Are Terrific
But Bordeaux Has Some Fantastic Wines At Affordable Prices
- If You Know Where to Look
Today I Have a German Making Wines in Bordeaux
- Spectacular Bordeaux Fruit
- Germanic Precision and Balance
- Hidden in Plain Sight and Among the Best Red Values in My Book
2012 Chateau La Reysse
- A Wine of Spectacular Balance and Precision
- A Super Fassy Wine That Just Happens to Be Made in Bordeaux
- Gorgeous Nose: Deep Red Fruits, Cassis, Tobacco, Smoke Leather
- Palate: Red Fruits Cassis, Minerality
- Terrific Acidic Balance
- Cigar, Leather, Tobacco
- Terrific Complexity But at the Price Can Be Enjoyed Any Time
- Terrific Value for 7 Years of Age
- Will Age for 10-12 More Years
2017 Clos du Moulin
- Nose: Hugely Fruited
- Big Deep Cassis, Bing Cherry
- Some Smoke and Tobacco
- Palate: Extremely Vivid
- Very Pure and Clean
- Deep Red Fruits
- Great Minerality
- Delicious Change of Pace Wine for Burgundy and Rhone Drinkers
The Land of Known and Unknown
Likely the first red wines that every one of us heard of was from Bordeaux. Mouton Rothschild. Petrus. Margeaux. These have been the wines of the rich and famous and are synonymous with wealth and, perhaps excess. Even James Bond drinks them when he's not sipping a martini.
But below the level of the top names, let's face it, the "it" crowd in the wine world is not seeking out Bordeaux. We're all hunting down affordable Burgundy and wines from the Rhone.
But let's step back a bit. There is no reason that there should not be terrific affordable wines in Bordeaux. They have great terroir, and a lot of it. And finding underappreciated wines, even in the
middle of a famous region, is what Fass Selections is all about.
Chateau La Reysse
Of course, if I'm going to sell a Bordeaux, it has to have a cool story. And a story that impacts the quality of the wines. And for this winery, I have that in spades. The winery is run by, of all things, a German winemaker by the name of Stefan Paeffgen. And his wines reflect a Germanic precision and balance. It's easy to find fruity wines in Bordeaux. The challenge is to get that balance so that the fruit is a platform for the aromatics. And that's what great winemakers do, even if they do it in relative obscurity in the land of known and unknown that is Bordeaux.The Wines
Today, after a very long wait I've got the 2012 Chateau La Reysse for as little as $26.99 each on a 4-pack. This is the best La Reysse since the 2010 and in 2012 is really coming along and in a great place.
Gorgeous nose of deep red fruits, cassis, tobacco, smoke and leather. Glossy, vivid and opulent nose. Enveloping with a background of gorgeous minerality. Juicy, so complex with a sleek texture and melty tannins.
Red fruits galore on the palate with such purity and freshness. Terrific concentration and small berry fruit intensity. So pure and juicy. Long finish and some structure to burn. Alluring and utterly delicious and shows how terrific and appealing well made affordable Bordeaux can be. Long. Wonderful. With air it has a cooling mineral nose with astonishing depth and purity which gives off an impression of amazing freshness. The palate is pure pleasure with oodles of blue and black fruits with a top note of cassis, wonderful acids, grippy forceful tannins and a real sense of place. Just an amazingly complex, powerful and delicate bottle of Bordeaux. You also get cigar, leather, tobacco and some nice wet earth as well as it aerates even more. I can see this aging for up to 10-12 more years. 2012 is such a great vintage as it allies finesse, power and freshness all at once. Freshness is so key in Bordeaux as wines can tend to be lactic, oaky and rich due to a general change in winemaking over the last 20-30 years. This is not that at all, this is what Bordeaux should be at $27 a bottle but rarely if ever is.
The Medoc can have challenging terroir as some of the vineyards are on soil that is more clay-dominated. Le Reysse has some terrific terroir on its vineyards that border Roland de By, which is a favorite wine of mine from this area.
I am also offering another wine from the La Reysse winemaker, Stefan Paeffgen that is just an outstanding value. The 2017 Clos du Moulin can be had for $20.99 on a 4-pack. This is value you do not see every day. Hugely fruited nose. Big deep cassis. Some smoke and tobacco underneath. Bing cherry as well. This wine has its obsessive fans. Round. Vivid. It is silky, with such well-defined and vivid fruit and perky acidity and such amazing persistence.
Palate is ripe and juicy with terrific freshness and thrust. Very pure and clean. Lovely note of tobacco leaf on the finish with some nice minerality. Very well made. No rush. Can last and improve 10 years. The fruit is red and deep. This is another baby vin de garde from Stefan Paeffgen and really will cellar well for 7-8 years. I have had around 4 bottles of the 2012 Clos du Moulin over the past 2 years and each one was better than the next. 2012 has ripe, juicy fruit a wonderful sense of place, not too tannic at all, but when the tannins are there, they are ripe and juicy. Again, so silly for a wine of this quality. It is best, for me, on the 3rd day and it, oddly enough, needs a longer decant than the 2012 La Reysee to start showing its stuff.
The Winery
The Le Reysse is part of stable of wines under the umbrella Vignobles Paeffgen, which is owned by the highly successful Stefan Paeffgen who in another life, was in agriculture in his home country of Germany. Of course I would find a killer Bordeaux via Germany. Ha! He grew up and worked in the Cologne area. Stefan finished his agricultural studies at the University of Stuttgart. He finished with a Doctorate in agricultural science. His parents had a farm and his older brother took over after his parents retired. Stefan worked in the Scandinavian Agriculture industry after his brother took over the farm.
The company he worked for got acquired and at age 46 Stefan was financially successful, but at a crossroads. He always had a passion for the wines of the Medoc and made a decision to go back to practical agriculture. He searched for a winery for up to a year and finally found a great spot in the Medoc.
Stefan bought 2 wineries in 2010 from Patrick Chaumont, Le Reysse being one of them. Chaumont stayed on for 2 years to help. They cooperated wonderfully and Stefan learned to make wines in the traditional style. Chaumont still visits every now and then to see how things are going. Stefan's family came and moved there in 2011. He then acquired Château Clos du Moulin and Château Moulin de Lestagne from Michel Boyer.
I've been very lucky to find this gem of an estate, Chateau la Reysse, in a category that is very hard to navigate. That is sub $25 Bordeaux. So many either soulless, souped up Parker wines, or wines that are just bad from the result of bad vineyard management and careless cellar work. Let's face it, there are a lot of hacks in Bordeaux selling mediocre wines at high prices based on the popularity of the region which is why Bordeaux has fallen out of favor among many wine drinkers.
That's why it is refreshing to do business with Stefan Paeffgen of Chateau La Reysse, a German who was enchanted by Bordeaux and decided to make it a career by buying Chateau la Reysse. He finished the 09 vintage as the sale happened halfway through that growing season but by 2010 it was his show and the debut is akin to Bob Feller on opening day in 1946.
2012 Chateau La Reysse Medoc - $28.99 ($107.96 4-pack) (LIMITED)
(Included Tariff $2.52)*
2017 Clos du Moulin Medoc- $22.99 ($83.96 4-pack) (LIMITED)
(Included Tariff $1.68*)
No comments:
Post a Comment