2019 Chateau Respide-Medeville Graves Rouge

Here is the original red Bordeaux. When the Médoc was still a swamp, the gravel hills of Graves were already shipping the wine England fell in love with and named claret, and this Cabernet-led 2019 continues that tradition at a price the district's famous names abandoned long ago.

Dutch engineers didn't drain the Médoc's marshes until the 1600s. By then Graves had been Bordeaux's vineyard for centuries, and its greatest estate, Haut-Brion, soon became the first wine ever praised by name, in Samuel Pepys's London diary of 1663. The district's signature has never changed: dark fruit wrapped in tobacco, warm stone, and savory minerality.

This bottle delivers on that signature. The vines grow in a gravel amphitheatre sloping down toward the Garonne, farmed sustainably, and the harvest stretches nearly two months because Julie Médeville picks each variety only when she judges it ready. The blend is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot from the superb 2019 vintage, and its window is open now: dark cherry and plum, tobacco leaf, cedar, and a long mineral finish.

The famous names of Graves charge hundreds for this signature. Almost nobody knows this address. Only a few bottles remain!