Today’s wine is a friendly reminder that we tend to drink red wines too young, when the fruit is high and the earth is low, rather than mature, when the two dynamics slip into one. We wish we could offer even more of these wines—these little pearls that uncover a singular terroir through the lens of classic, consummate grapes—but in reality, Bordeaux is one of the few regions in the world where such bottles are in ready supply.
During my buying trips abroad, I always try to contain myself when tasting with
négociants and at the
châteaux themselves, but that’s almost impossible to do when I’m bombarded with one perfectly stored, perfectly mature wine after another—at prices like that of today’s wine, no less! There aren’t many wine regions in the world where you can acquire a decade-old gem like today’s Château Benillan Médoc for less than $30. This perfectly stored 2008 offers everything I want from a wine that has rested in a cool, dark, and perfectly damp cellar for a decade. The bells of Bordeaux echo with fresh red and black fruits and the hum of sweet tobacco, cedar, and forest floor. It’s wines like this that are making Bordeaux ‘hot’ again: As wine drinkers begin to value complexity and classical proportions over fruit-bomb intensity, Bordeaux is uniquely positioned to fill the bill. Mature red wine is one of life’s great pleasures, and it can—and should—be enjoyed by everyone!
Just north of the distinguished Saint-Estèphe commune sits the town of Blaignan, home to the sixth generation of the Benillan family and their backyard slopes of clay and limestone. When studying wine formally, memorizing the 1855 Bordeaux classification is law, ingrained in practice and routine (like doing push-ups or laundry). Nearly 200 years later, the classification is still a benchmark, rightly praising the greats like Lafite, Ducru, and Palmer, yet Left Bank Bordeaux is so much more than rankings and numbers. There are unsung châteaux everywhere, matching the quality of bigger estates with heftier price tags, and that’s what today’s wine is all about—the little guy taking on the titans. Château Benillan will never be big, it will never have a prestigious ranking or get caught up in confetti of critical praise, and that’s okay. This is what makes Bordeaux special and, like Burgundy or Piedmont, still one of the most surprising and comforting regions on the planet.
We’ll admit it, for Bordeaux wines in the $30-and-under category, wine labels can be dated, homogenous, as if there is a giant factory on the outskirts of Bordeaux printing millions of copies. If today’s wine had a different label— bold strokes of modern art or a couple of geometric shapes with clean lines—would it change its appeal? Today we’re asking you to look beyond a name without a résumé, look beyond an ordinary face and be logical. The substance is delicious.
The Médoc area is home to Bordeaux’s most prestigious villages. When you zoom out, it is a peninsula, a fairly flat landscape with coastal lagoons and pine forests. With its wet climate, it’s a hard place to grow grapes unless you have well-draining soils, like the deep gravels of Pauillac. As you move north from the heart of Pauillac through Saint-Estèphe into the tip of the Médoc, the soils change, from deep gravels into more limestone-clay, which befriend the earlier ripening Merlot grape. The blends, here are typically Cabernet Sauvignon with a nice chunk of Merlot, giving the wines an attractive nose of juicy red fruits, soft lift, and cocoa tannin. If you like Château Haut-Brion, then you like a lot of Merlot in your Cabernet Sauvignon. A few years ago, when Jancis Robinson re-tasted a few 2008 wines, she called her article “Bordeaux 2008—the last affordable vintage revisited.” It was a tricky vintage, but far from a bad one. It was a vintage with moderate alcohol levels, a vintage that got swept under the gravels by the successive blockbusters of 2009 and 2010. So, in “little” wines like Château Benillan, the value stockpiles.
With minimal new oak and minimal manipulation of wine in the cellar, today’s wine is a celebration of place. Cabernet and Merlot tannin stretch and unfold over time, and the timeless scents of the Médoc rise. Despite the age on today’s wine, it still has enough fruit and structure to go a yearly distance (I would make sure to save a few bottles for the holidays). Stand the bottles upright a few days before opening to let the fine sediment naturally settle to the bottom. A large Bordeaux stem makes the perfect decanter for this wine, which will show best at around 60 degrees, just above cellar temperature. In the glass, a deep ruby-garnet fades into a tawny rim with moderate-plus color concentration. A gentle swirl unleashes the first scents of classic Left Bank Bordeaux: damp leaves, sweet tobacco, green violets, bitter cocoa, and forest floor. The fruit spirals in and out of red and black: red raspberries, then black ones, red plums, then black ones, red currants, then black ones. On the palate, the fruit is persistent with elements of tart, fresh, and dried, and slides into the savory tones; medium -plus -bodied tannins have enough bandwidth to carry this wine into a long finish. The complexity within the wine is subtle, so I wouldn’t pair this with anything too heavy. Be disciplined and stick with the “less is more” dinner theme. I prefer a cut of beef that is rich in flavor but leaner in fat, like the tri-tip. Like Château Benillan, tri-tip is a well-kept secret, so you might need the assistance of a butcher. The attached recipe will have you dusting off your backyard grill just in time for summer, but remember, make sure to keep a few bottles for the holidays! Enjoy!
