2019 Cru La Maqueline Bordeaux France 750 ml

Take a ten-minute drive southeast from Chateau Margaux, the legendary estate known for powerful, $500+ reds, and you’ll reach the front door of Cru La Maqueline. If you blink along the way, you might miss the invisible line separating Margaux from the broader Bordeaux appellation.

Here, in a tiny pocket of market inefficiency next to the Gironde, lies one of the best values in all of Bordeaux. The accident of Maqueline’s geography means we can offer their lush 95-point 2019 to Wine Access members for a mere $17.

Despite its humble price, this is a serious bottle of Merlot-driven Bordeaux. After an hour or so in the decanter, it blossoms to reveal beautiful aromas of gently roasted plums, lilacs, vanilla-tinged espresso, and a hint of spice. The palate is muscular and rich, delivering black cherries, dark plums, and hints of graphite. We’re looking forward to drinking it in five or more years, but it’s immensely satisfying right now alongside a hanger steak with sauce marchand de vin.

Owned and run by the Castel family best known for their Grand Cru Classé Château Beychevelle, Cru La Maqueline is a passion project that’s paying rewards in prestige. The 2019 was awarded a gold medal and stunning 95-point score at the Decanter World Wine Awards, where it was praised as “a superb effort which is complete and exciting.”

If it seems unthinkable that a property like Maqueline could be this undervalued, it helps to remember that their sandy-clay soils resemble legendary Right Bank communes St.-Émilion and Pomerol more than the northern part of Margaux—a fact that wasn’t properly valued when the appellation was created in 1936. As a result, this sliver of land next to the river was considered sub-par—but it shines when planted to Merlot, which is ideal for the soil, rather than the Left Bank’s typical Cabernet Sauvignon.

These days, now that nearby Cru Classé Châteaux like Kirwan, d’Issan, and Siran have all been planting more Merlot to take advantage of this corner of Bordeaux’s unique soils, Cru La Maqueline looks positively visionary—even if they’ll never be able to charge the stratospheric prices of their neighbors.

La Maqueline farms their vineyards sustainably and produces their wine with care and precision, fermenting it for 30 days, with regular pump-overs and rack-and-returns to help with extraction and preserve the elegance of the tannins. Aging for ten months with a small fraction of new oak allows for polish and elegance, and careful micro-oxygenation helps with early drinkability.

The result is one of the great overlooked gems of Bordeaux—a grand vin in everything but price.