2015 Domaine de Courteillac Bordeaux Superieur 750 ml

The 2015 Domaine de Courteillac powerfully overdelivers in both category and price, blowing past the Bordeaux Supérieur competition with a sophistication and chiseled structure that are of Grand Cru Classé quality.

Bearing the masterly touch of 100-point winemaker Stéphane Derenoncourt, it offers a glimpse of the profound heights the Right Bank can achieve, while miraculously remaining priced like a Bordeaux Supérieur.

Master of Wine Jancis Robinson called this release “amazing for the appellation.” Vinous’s Antonio Galloni offered the kind of luminous praise typically reserved for a $70 Saint-Émilion, declaring it “fabulous,” “superb”, “overachieving,” and “intensely aromatic, rich and delineated.”

The silky, polished texture and generous bouquet of cassis, dark cherry, and leafy tobacco won us over to Domaine de Courteillac immediately. But the wine really showed what it could do when poured alongside a juicy gourmet burger; the interplay of wine’s bright acidity and slinky tannins with the dry-aged beef patty, melted cheddar, and caramelized onions was the stuff of gourmand dreams. An outstanding value Bordeaux made by a Right Bank legend—the kind of wine you can’t have enough of in the cellar.

Michel Rolland and Stéphane Derenoncourt are probably the two most famous wine consultants in France. While Rolland is a sage of blending and aging, Derenoncourt’s specialty is soil. He boasts of never having taken an enology class, instead relying on decades of personally handling and cultivating vines at the top estates in Bordeaux. Wines he’s consulted on for Clos Fourtet, Smith Haut Lafitte, and La Mondotte have won perfect scores from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, and command prices of $300 and more.

Since Derenoncourt came on as consultant at Domaine de Courteillac, the estate’s rise has been one of the most exciting stories to come out of the Entre-Deux-Mers region. Derenoncourt doesn’t just work with just any estate—he chooses carefully. The land he works with must be special. And Domaine de Courteillac has that quality in spades.

The vineyards occupy a plateau with an elevation that’s among the highest in Entre-Deux-Mers, leading to greater freshness and intensity. Clay and limestone soils infuse the grapes with complexity while its eastern location creates a unique advantage: Away from the maritime influence of the coast, the warmer climate helps the grapes attain a luxuriant ripeness and power, which Derenoncourt makes every effort to preserve and instill in the bottles.

In 2015 he succeeded brilliantly, aided by a vintage that lacked for nothing in concentration while providing firm structure and loads of dense, dark, gorgeous fruit. Derenoncourt has called it “the greatest vintage of my career.”

Here’s your $24 ticket to see what Bordeaux’s greatest soil seer can accomplish in the vintage of a lifetime.