Wine and Food

Cháteau Latour-Martillac, Grand Cru Classé de Graves, Pessac-Léognan, 2011, Redwine from France

5,5 points

The wine area Graves is a part of Bordeaux although you would not recognize this if you wouldn’t know automatically about Graves or you turn the bottle and see the backside label.  I bought this bottle at a Casino or Intermarche kind of supermarket in the southern suburbs of Bordeaux. Although it wasn’t too cheap it demystifies the glamour and approach of a “Grand Cru Classé” wine from Bordeaux. The presentation of the wine at the supermarket board was unattractive, on the other hand, and this is likeable that so good wine is accessible to more or less everybody (you at least need to be in the suburbs of Bordeaux). So, why not to buy such wine in a supermarket! But why these wines are on sale if they are still so young? I simply doubt that anyone buys a wine at this store to take them home, store it appropriately and drink it only in some years or even in the best case in a decade.

Reading about the quality of Bordeaux wines, the difference of vintages and all the impressive competition in regard to qualifications, ratings and classes of wines let me come to the conclusion that you either would need to spend a lot of time and need to taste very many wine to get serious knowledge of this area, or you do it like me: just buy what could be interesting and taste it – I tell you: there is also bad stuff. If you are an expert you are very much welcome to comment my writing or just accept that I am an amateur.

As said, the wine is certainly too young! But everything else is good. Probably as a concession to the soil of Graves – which is less stony and less permeable as such areas as Medoc – there is a pretty large portion of Merlot aside of the Cabernet Sauvignon. It makes the wine warmly dry and a bit less fruity which I really enjoyed. Balancing the sometimes a little bit stressing note of too young Merlot there are rich notes of barrique. Giving the wine some more time to breath you taste black berries, sweet cherries and raspberries. The entire approach is really fresh – not because of the age of the wine but because of a very nice concentration and sourness.

In regard 5 points I gave the wine, it could easily become a 6 in some years.

Considering the price of the wine of below € 40 (!) it was a good buy! If you are able to store wine for a decade, buy it and give it the time to mature and become probably an extraordinary experience for this money.

Again, as I am not an expert about Bordeaux wine and as many of you know the most famous brands although never have drunken for instance a Pétrus I once said that you would not find any description of a wine which costs more than € 150 / bottle at my blog because there are limits of appropriateness.

Aside of the wine itself, it’s worth reading a little bit about the story of the vinery (at Wikipedia or the vinerey’s own webpage). Since almost hundred years the vinery belongs to the Kressmann family, not really a French name but German. According to Wikipedia it was an Eduard Kressmann, a wine trader, who bought the estate as the previous owner died without successors. Kressmann was in the danger to lose his best wines he was selling. A nice symbioses!

Please see more about the vinery at their webpage: http://www.latourmartillac.com/ or at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Latour-Martillac