Chateau Plaisance and Other Bordeaux Treasures

I recently saw a Bordeaux wine at my local wine store that said Chateau Plaisance 2005 Bordeaux Superior, among other things, on the label. I became curious as to the provenance of this wine, since the store clerk told me that the distributor where he bought the wine said that the name "Chateau Plaisance" was just a generic, made-up name and didn't really mean anything. Well, this is just not plausible, since in France, wine labeling is taken very seriously; what you can and cannot put on a label is tightly controlled by strictly enforced laws. In France, calling a wine Chateau something or other just to make it sound impressive would not normally happen, or only under very special circumstances. So I became curious, and decide to undertake a little research project on this wine.

I couldn't find anything about a Chateau Plaisance in most of the standard reference books. So I went to the "bible" of Bordeaux references which lists and describes over 7000 wine producing estates in Bordeaux. According to this book, Bordeaux and Its Wines by Claude Feret, there are a total of five Ch.ateau Plaisance in Bordeaux, all of them more or less obscure. By the way, it’s not unusual for the same name to be used by more than one wine growing estate in Bordeaux. How many Chateau Bel-Air or Belair are there?

One of the Chateau Plaisance is in the Cadillac region of Bordeaux, an area that produces dessert wines in the Sauternes style, so this one is not the one we are looking for. There is another one in St. Emilion and another in Montagne St. Emilion. As I see it, neither of these is a likely candidate, since if a wine could be labeled St. Emilion rather than Bordeaux Superior as our Chateau Plaisance is, it would be. And none of the information about these two estates seemed to jive with the label on the bottle of Ch. Plaisance.

So, by the process of elimination, we are down to two remaining candidates, and both of these are in the Medoc region. One of these is in the Saint-Seurin-de Cardourne district, which is just to the north of St. Estephe, in the Haut Medoc. This estate is apparently entitled to use the appellation Haut-Medoc, and again, if a wine could use that instead of just Bordeaux Superior, it would. And again, none of the information in the book seems to indicate that this one is the one.

Now we are left with only one candidate. This one is located near the village of Macau, which is just south of Margaux in the southern Medoc. This chateau is very obscure; very little information is given about it. However, on the label of my bottle of Chateau Plaisance there are the words “Macau en Medoc” and “Margaux”. So this is almost surely our guy. According to the book, this wine is only entitled to the appellation “Bordeaux Superior” or “Bordeaux”, rather than “Haut Medoc”, so that is consistent with what we see on the label.

The label also indicates that this wine was “Mis en boutelle au chateau”, or “bottled at the chateau”. This is a guarantee of authenticity; if the wine is sold in bulk and bottled by a dealer where it could be adulterated, it cannot be labeled as “chateau bottled”. These laws are very strictly enforced in France; no one there would dare to fraudulently label a wine as “chateau bottled”. So we know that our wine did indeed come from some Chateau Plaisance in Bordeaux, and the only possibility is the one near Macau. The production is tiny, only about 500 cases, although that information is quite old, and it could well have changed by now.

To summarize, I was able to determine for sure that there is a real wine growing estate in Bordeaux called Chateau Plaisance; actually, there are five of them. I also know for sure that my bottle of wine came from one of these estates (since it is “chateau bottled”), and I can be very confident that it is the tiny estate in the vicinity of Macau in the southern Medoc. This wine is therefore an authentic estate grown and bottled Bordeaux, albeit from an obscure, minor estate.

Other than being of intense interest to the wine enthusiast, the lesson here is that there are so many "chateau" in Bordeaux that you can go treasure hunting among the more obscure ones to find bargains. My bottle of Chateau Plaisance cost $18.95, which, while above our "great value" limit of $10, is low for a chateau bottled Bordeaux. And with a special sale going on at my wine store, I can get a case of it for somewhere around $16 a bottle, which is getting good.

A good way to find a value among real Bordeaux, which tend to be grotesquely expensive, is to explore the many unknown, obscure chateau that there are. With ove 7000 to choose from, the fun never ends.

More Evidence That Price Is Not Necessarily Related To Quality

I read an article in the Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal recently that reviewed Merlots from California in the $20 to $50 price range. The conclusion was that most of the wines were mediocre at best! Fifty dollar wines!! These evaluations were done by professional tasters, so their opinions have credence.

This is the just more evidence of what I have been saying for a long time: In the wine world, price is not necessarily related to quality. You can pay a lot of money for a run-of-the-mill wine, and you can find some real gems for a relative pittance. Many producers seem to think that the wine consumer is too stupid to know the difference when they slap a fifty dollar price tag on an ordinary wine.

Now about Merlot, it is important to keep in mind that it has traditionally been used as one of the wines in the classic Bordeaux blend, along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. The relative proportions of the blend vary from producer to producer in Bordeaux, but the wine is almost always a blend with about 20% Merlot. Also keep in mind that Bordeaux wines have been regarded as some of the absolute best red wines in the world for hundreds of years, so we should pay attention to how they do things.

Yes, in the Pomerol district of Bordeaux, the wines are usually about 80% Merlot, and some are 100%. But overall, Merlot is a component of the Bordeaux blend. It wasn't meant to "stand alone", except in some very special situations.

Here is what Bordeaux and Its Wines (the Bible of Bordeaux reference books) says about Merlot: "Merlot was often looked upon in its former times as an auxially variety. However, wine made from it has very real qualities, a lot of bouquet, savor and softness, which attenuates the firmness of the Cabernet wines and make them drinkable sooner."

I say go for a Merlot and Cabernet blend. Here is a good one: duo by Alto de Casablanca in the Maipo Valley of Chile. It's 74% Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Merlot. Very good, lucious, deep, and rich flavored. It meets our criterion of a great value; don't pay more than eight or nine dollars a bottle, maybe less. Or do some experimenting with other Bordeaux blends from Chile.