Chateau Le Vieux Fort Medoc 2018

"Château Bernateau is a beautiful estate spreading over 18 acres benefiting from an incredible soil made of clay and limestone hilldsides and limestone plateau. This rare terroir is planted of 72% of Merlot, 25% of Cabernet and 3% of Petit Verdot. The LAVAU family runs the estate since 8 generations now and make a complex, racy Saint-Emilion Grand Cru." —winemaker

Blend: 70% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot

"Dark and deep ruby color with an intense nose of jammed fruits, black olives, and dark spices. Silky, elegant mouth, cheerful Gigondas." —winemaker

"Brilliant ruby-red. Fresh and energetic on the nose, displaying intense red fruit preserve and floral scents and a suggestion of white pepper. Juicy and supple on the palate, offering sweet raspberry and cherry flavors and a refreshingly bitter blood orange nuance. Fine grained tannins build slowly through a long, sappy finish that leaves behind a suave lavender note." —winemaker

"Superb deep color. The complex nose offers notes of ripe fruit, spices and flowers. Full bodied and balanced, the palate is very delicate with magnificent aromas of cherries, plums and licorice and a long finish." —winemaker

"The color is intense, deep and steady. The nose shows maturity with aromas of black fruits and warm spices. We find the soils of origin are revealed with floral notes (violet) which are lightly smoky. We can find the same aromatic notes on the Northern Côtes du-Rhône soils, which are the birthplace of the Syrah. The attack is both supple and powerful. Tannins are at the same time powerful and tight. The finale is fresh without any heaviness." —winemaker

Wine Anthology Team Review-Made up of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan this wine comes from one of the top estates in the Rhone valley. Perfectly balanced, elegant and full of flavor from start to finish this bottle would be an ideal companion with most Lamb dishes. Take this with you to dinner and thank me later. Cheers!

"100% Gamay. The cru of Moulin-à-Vent is generally considered the source of the potentially longest-lived, most structured Beaujolais, thanks mainly to the high manganese and iron content of its clay-heavy soils. Here Jean-Paul farms 4 hectares of 30-to-45-year-old vines whose roots are forced to go deep by the thin, sandy, pink-granite top soils. As for all Terres Dorées reds, the vinification is traditional Burgundian. The grapes are rigorously sorted and destemmed, crushed and fermented with indigenous yeasts and no sulfur. Maceration lasts up to 6 weeks for the Moulin (the longest along with the Grille Midi Fleurie); aging, unique among his wines, takes place in old oak barrels, for up to 10 months, before bottling with minimal filtration and a small amount of sulfur." —importer