Description
Château Sainte Marguerite, Médoc
If we were a brick and mortar, there’d be a line wrapping around the block for today’s offer because everyone has an affinity for Left Bank Bordeaux with perfect provenance and substantial age. Loaded with the unlimited savor of a world-famous terroir and incomparable “secondary” flavors, these showpieces consistently blow us away, but in a vintage like 2009, they can be unequivocally transcendent.
This was a legendary year that propelled Bordeaux into a truly magical, opulent, and painfully expensive state. Pricetags skyrocketed with no regard for wine budgets and, to this day, average market prices still top other blockbuster vintages like 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2016! So how is it possible that we just landed one, directly from Bordeaux, for $29? The answer is right there on the front label: Château Sainte Marguerite, which is helmed by a hermetic wizard deep in the northern reaches of Médoc. Adrien Tramier is a man who rarely sleeps, defies the status quo, and couldn’t care less about press. But most interesting of all, he doesn’t use any oak—never plans to and never has. In fact, when Jancis Robinson visited him a decade ago, his 1975 vintage was still resting in stainless steel! What I’m getting at is that today’s savory, lushly textured Merlot-Cab blend is an anomaly, both in price and style. For under $30, this is among the most pleasurable and unique Bordeaux experiences I’ve had.
The Gironde Estuary is the natural boundary of Bordeaux’s Left Bank, which is sometimes referred to as the Médoc. But the term can be confusing. “Médoc” traditionally refers to the entire Left Bank area, containing the famous AOCs of Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, and Margaux, but as an officially codified appellation, on a wine label, it refers to the downstream neighborhood of the Gironde, the northern vineyards above Saint-Estèphe where clay intercepts gravel, making it a friendly terroir for more Merlot and less Cabernet Sauvignon. Estates such as Château Potensac, Goulée by Cos d’Estournel, and Légende by Lafite are a few of the more familiar names who have planted vines in this “wild west” of Bordeaux—a hot spot for accessibility, consistency, and wines that over-deliver. Sainte Marguerite is their under-the-radar neighbor, and it embraces its outlier status in another noteworthy way: In a region where aging in French oak barriques is routine and liberally practiced, Château Marguerite stands firmly with steel and cement. Marguerite is a champion of pure, “makeup-free\ wines, and this Merlot-dominant blend is an evocative melding of cigar-scented earth and pristine fruit.
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And it’s not because they “feel” like aging the wines without oak. The Tramier family has done this for decades—they truly believe this is the purest way, and it’s hard to argue otherwise once tasting this wine. Their lack of oak drew so much attention that Jancis Robinson took a visit and sat down with “The Médoc Outsider,” Adrien Tramier. Still, Château Sainte Marguerite—now run by Adrien’s son, Lionel—maintains a low-key profile, tucked away in the village of Bégadan, a 10-minute drive north of Saint-Estèphe. The property encompasses just nine hectares of clay-heavy gravels, planted with Merlot, followed by Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. With proximity to the chilly Atlantic and its coastal winds that tunnel through pockets of the Landes forest, the terroir of Marguerite is prime for earlier-ripening Merlot. Cooler than inland Pomerol and St-Émilion, it is almost impossible to achieve monstrous alcohol levels this far north. Balance and restraint do exist, and they’re on display here.
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With 65% Merlot and 35% Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, Sainte Marguerite’s 2009 release fills the glass with a deep ruby core that transitions to a hazy brick-orange band on the rim. Because it was fermented with natural yeasts and bottled with minimal sulfur, I recommend giving the wine a good 30 minutes of air after pulling the cork or quickly decanting for 5-10 minutes. Afterward, all you need to do is pull out your best Bordeaux stems and give the wine a soft swirl to unleash the explosive charm of the Médoc. Ripe and supple fruit in the form of candied cherry, framboise, and baked red plum fires out, followed by tobacco leaf, wild herbs, forest floor, fired clay, crushed gravel, and hints of exotic spice. The palate is full and lush with incredibly fine tannins that equate to ultra-soft layers of liqueured berry fruit. This is in an impeccable drinking window right now, one I suspect will stay open until 2025. Enjoy!
