2015 Chateau Malescot St. Exupery Margaux 750 ml

Smart-buy alert for Bordeaux collectors: This 97-point 2015 Château Malescot St. Exupéry comes from a Third Growth Margaux estate that is a rather leisurely two-minute drive to First Growth Château Margaux. If you drive slowly enough with the window down, you’ll notice that the vines at Malescot are just a beautiful as those at Margaux, which share the same exquisite terroir. But you won’t see any signs proclaiming the difference in price. 

A bottle of 2015 Margaux will set you back $1,499, versus a bottle of 2015 Malescot, which is just $99 today. James Suckling honored the 2015 with a glowing 97-point review, and Vinous praised it as “one of the highlights of the vintage.” A neighbor to Château Margaux, for under $100 from the outstanding 2015 vintage— that’s as savvy a Bordeaux pickup as they come, and they don’t come around like that very often. We have just 120 bottles.

If the Michelin Guide rated Bordeaux châteaux, Malescot would certainly be “worth a special journey.” One of the most structured of the Grand Cru Classé wines in Margaux, and a steal at today’s price (see our chart above), we last made a special journey to the property in 2009, when it earned a slew of 96-98 point scores. 

The current owners have been improving the estate ever since 1994, and it is arguably making better wine than ever in its storied existence. If you poured the 100-point Palmer side-by-side, for example (like we did) you’d have a hard time noticing the minute 3-point differences. Both possess the power and structure to last decades in the cellar, but the Malescot is a wine that doesn’t require a decade or two of patience—it’s firing on all cylinders already.   

In 1827, the Count of St. Exupéry purchased Château Malescot and the surrounding 15 acres of vineyards and then renamed his estate Château Malescot St. Exupéry. Twenty-six years later, following the death of the count, his widow was obliged to auction off this now-priceless domaine just a stone's throw from Château Margaux. 

(A quick side note: For those of us who spent hundreds of evenings reading bedtime stories to kids who refused to close their eyes, you surely remember Le Petit Prince, whose author was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the count's great-grandson. If you're a history buff, you may also recall that Antoine was both a novelist and an aviator, whose plane vanished mysteriously off the coast of Nazi-occupied France on July 31, 1944, during a reconnaissance mission for the American army.)

Château Malescot St. Exupéry passed into the hands of the Zuger family in 1955, 11 years after the count’s great-grandson flew his final mission. As the war-torn economy rebounded, the château experienced a major renaissance. The surge continued into the new millennium—propelled by owner Jean-Luc Zuger’s diligence in the vineyard and the cellar.

Malescot St. Exupéry’s meteoric rise wasn’t lost on Robert Parker. Exactly a decade ago, reviewing the 2010 vintage, the Advocate noted, “This estate, which has been on a qualitative crescendo for over ten years, has made a prodigious 2010 that ranks alongside their 2009, 2005 and 2000.” 

This 2015 ranks among the top 10 highest rated wines in the estate’s history, evidence that the “crescendo” is still climbing, and may soon reach a feverish “perfect” pitch. For those of you with space in the cellar, locking into six bottles at our lowest price of $89 a bottle means getting to enjoy a couple of bottles this year and a few over the next, while you stash away a bottle or two for opening in 2030 or beyond. The only thing is…just 280 bottles are up for grabs.