Bordeaux is the center of the fine wine world. The maritime climate on the 45th parallel offers perfect conditions for growing grapes fit for classically-constructed, long-lasting wines. This vast region is home to 10,000 wine producers and 57 different AOCs. Through our collaboration with the Negociant house of CVBG we’re now able to source a range of mature and library wines with perfect provenance directly from Bordeaux Chateaux cellars at extremely competitive prices. The Bordeaux Project will offer two to three wines per month of highly rated and tightly allocated wines to gradually stock your cellar.

2015 Latour-Martillac, Pessac-Léognan Grand Cru (Pre-Arrival – April) $99.95 per bottle.  15 x six packs
“This is a great Pessac-Léognan from this château, one of the best in recent years… Robert Parker”
95 points Wine Enthusiast
Solid tannins mark this still very young wine. At the same time, the fruit is rich and well-proportioned. Black currants dominate the fruity spectrum, giving the wine richness as well as great potential.

94 points Vinous
The 2015 Latour-Martillac is a powerful, muscular wine. Beams of tannin give the 2015 its potent, brooding personality. Savory herbs, new leather, wild cherry, smoke and kirsch get an extra kick of intensity from bright acids and pointed yet well-integrated tannins. Today, the 2015 is a bit reticent and tightly wound, but that should be less of an issue with more time in bottle.

93 points Decanter
Powerful, finessed and deeply textured, with well-balanced cassis and blackberry fruit. It shows great appellation signature, a testament to the vintage. Will age beautifully.

93 points James Suckling
Some handy depth here. Ripe dark cherries and blackberries are framed in slightly nutty, cedary and spicy oak. The palate’s built on polished layered tannin sheets, delivering depth and sturdiness amid fresh flavors of dark cherries and cassis. Best from 2022.

93 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
Medium to deep garnet-purple colored, the 2015 Latour Martillac has a spicy nose of cinnamon stick, cloves and aniseed with a core of red and black cherries and a waft of fragrant earth. The palate is medium-bodied with plenty of juicy fruit and a firm frame of fine-grained tannins with bags of freshness lifting the finish.

2016 Virginie de Valandraud, St-Emilion Grand Cru  (Pre-Arrival – April) $119.95 per bottle  – 15 x six packs
Bordeaux ‘Bad Boy’ Jean-Luc Thunevin, and his wife Murielle Andraud, bought their first plot of unclassified Bordeaux vines in 1989, in Saint-Emilion. Working against the grain, Thunevin aimed for low yields and in 1991 released his first vintage of Chateau Valandraud, one of the world’s first “garage wines”.

In 1995, Chateau Valandraud wine won a 95 rating from Parker, and soon its wines were out-pricing established Bordeaux classified growths. Coined a “bad boy” and a “black sheep” by Parker, Thunevin crumbled the clos in Bordeaux, home to a very traditional practice. He began as an off-the-grid innovator, who modeled an alternative for the aspiring Bordeaux vintner.

93-95 points Wine Enthusiast
This second wine from first-growth Valandraud is solidly structured and offers swathes of ripe black-plum fruit. It is dense and full in the mouth, with the potential of a wonderfully velvety texture as it ages. Acidity keeps the wine crisp.

94 points Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Virginie de Valandraud is a deep, full-bodied, opulent beauty that knocks it out of the park in 2016. It’s the equivalent of many a top wine and has huge notes of crème de cassis, black raspberries, spicy oak, and licorice. With ripe tannins, a great texture, and a sexy, pleasure-bent style that’s already impossible to resist, drink it over the coming 10-15 years.

93 Points Vinous
The 2016 Virginie de Valandraud is well defined and focused on the nose of blackberry, raspberry, crushed stone and rose petal aromas that burst from the glass. The palate is medium bodied with fine tannins, very poised and harmonious, and supremely well assimilated oak toward the poised, persistent finish. Superb.

94 points James Suckling
A linear and tight wine with blackberries, black cherries and minerals. Violets to boot. Medium-bodied, racy and clean. Second wine of Valandraud.

Both wines are due to arrive late March/April, reach out for your allocation.