As expected, many keen, early-bird buyers absorbed our entire stock of 2001 Château Roudier this morning, so we’re releasing the last bit of our 1998 Château Saint-Nicolas. This brilliant Fronsac may be a bit older, but it's every bit as fresh as its 2001 Bordeaux counterpart. If you missed the Roudier offer this morning, here’s your chance for redemption. If you were quick enough to buy it, well, this remaining trove of Right Bank ‘98 will serve as a tremendous bonus purchase!
Sure, Château Saint-Nicolas is a 20-year-old Bordeaux with a price so low it may cause whiplash, but if you’re still pausing at the sight of “Fronsac” on the label, don’t. This Right Bank appellation might not pop up first (or even third) on your radar, but as we’ve learned over and over again during our visits to Bordeaux, great wine is lurking around every corner. Today’s mature Fronsac, with its plush fruit and brilliant vigor, made us believe it was from a fancier château with a far higher price. This bottle perfectly represents the outstanding 1998 vintage, where ‘Right Bank’ Merlot reached perfect levels of ripeness and balance. Take Pomerol and Saint-Émilion: These powerhouses churned out luscious beauties across the board; revisiting them today just confirms their hype. So where does Fronsac come into play? Proximity! Just a few miles west of these titan appellations, you’ll find the wooded hillsides of Fronsac, and my singular experience with Château Saint-Nicolas has made me a believer in its ability to compete as high-performance Bordeaux. Our shipment arrived last month and, while we wanted to wait for the holidays, we simply couldn’t hold out any longer. The provenance is impeccable, the wine is brimming with life at the 20-year mark, and it carries the impressive stamp of classic Bordeaux terroir—you’re going to love it!
As in so many of Bordeaux’s lesser-known regions, Fronsac has been a hotbed of investment and revival—Château Saint-Nicolas being one of the foremost examples. Perched on the River Dordogne, Fronsac has the right soils and plenty of history—including one of Charlemagne’s ancient fortresses—to compete with its better-known neighbors. Located just west of Saint-Émilion and Pomerol, across a small tributary of the Dordogne, Fronsac sits at a slightly higher elevation and features even more limestone soil than Saint-Émilion’s famed plateau (along with clay and sand). Run by the Chevalier family for multiple generations, Saint-Nicolas’ 1998 bottling was sourced from 10 hectares of estate-owned vines, averaging 45 years old. Grapes fermented in temperature-controlled vats and the juice was then transferred to a mixture of used and new French barriques. After bottling, they rested in a cool cellar in Bordeaux until we snatched them up earlier this year.
Though it certainly looks the part of a well-aged wine, you'll be stunned when you encounter its still-youthful aromatics. In a blind tasting, I’m assuredly calling this mature Bordeaux, but I’d be shocked to see ‘1998’ on the label—that’s the benefit of a wonderful vintage; wines can effortlessly age (the best deceptively so). Château Saint-Nicolas reveals a faint ruby core leading out to a brick-orange, nearly persimmon rim, and shows a heavy presence of sediment throughout. Therefore, stand the bottle upright 24 hours prior to consuming and when the time comes to decant for sediment, slowly pull the cork (with an Ah-So opener, if you have one) and monitor the wine closely, leaving the “smoke” (the remaining wine that is full of sediment) in the bottle. Then, without waiting, pour into large Bordeaux stems and enjoy the ride over the course of 2-3 hours: Bright red cherries, red and black plum skins, red currants, dried rose petals, black raspberries, bay leaf, damp gravel, wet clay, cigar box, fresh cedar, whole cloves, and vanilla are all vividly and expressively there. The palate reveals a generous medium body with mouth-watering prickly red fruits (far from being ‘dried out’), and perfect acidity—again, thanks to 1998—that lingers alongside savory earth and rocky minerality on the finish. For such a complex experience, this is one phenomenal value that will continue evolving over the next several years, so there’s no rush for you to deplete your case. Just make sure you treat at least one or two bottles with a well-prepared dinner—roasted quail with portobello mushrooms will do the job nicely. Cheers!
