Every wine professional has an "Epiphany Bottle"—the single wine that flicked the switch from "this is a nice beverage" to "I need to dedicate my life to this." For one of the founding partners of... Read More

Every wine professional has an "Epiphany Bottle"—the single wine that flicked the switch from "this is a nice beverage" to "I need to dedicate my life to this." For one of the founding partners of Flatiron Wines (Jeff), that bottle was Château Cantemerle 1989. He drank it nearly 30 years ago, and he still talks about it today (and even occasionally manages to find a pristine bottle to drink).

Although not nearly as fancy as a First Growth, that bottle nonetheless seemed like an expensive indulgence to Jeff back in the 1990s. And here’s the amazing thing: 30 years later, you can buy recent, top vintages of Cantemerle for exactly the same price that he paid way back when.

Cantemerle’s secret is geography. It is labeled Haut-Médoc, and if you look at the Bordeaux map, you will see that the Haut-Médoc is mostly an appellation that extends north of St-Estèphe up towards the mouth of the Gironde. But that is not where Cantemerle is located. A tiny strip of the appellation runs alongside the great villages of the southern Médoc, and it turns out that Cantemerle sits right on the border with Margaux. It has the same deep, fine gravels that define its famous neighbor, and those soils produce the same floral, silky, and intensely aromatic wines.

Since Jeff’s epiphany bottle, Cantemerle has remained true to itself. While many châteaux spent the 2000s chasing scores with high extraction and new oak, Cantemerle stayed the course. This is an old school claret. It is never overly polished or flashy. It relies on charm, fresh acidity, and savory complexity rather than sheer power.