Château Charmail: Tasting & Drinking
Although I have never spent much time drinking the wines of Château Charmail, I was glad of my knowledge of this château late in 2014 when I landed at a fashionable bistro in Bordeaux. The wine list was, bearing in mind the fact that this tiny restaurant was located in the world’s greatest wine region, really rather sparse. At least that was the case at the more affordable end of the list; I’m not exactly unfamiliar with names like Château Ausone and Le Dôme, but I’m not about to pay restaurant prices for them.
And then my eyes settled on the 2010 Château Charmail. It was a wine I had tasted previously, at the annual Cru Bourgeois tasting; it hadn’t shown that well on the day, but to be fair I was rather underwhelmed by many wines on the day. I think, on reflection, I caught them in a bad spot. After an hour or so nursing a glass or two of the 2010 in Bordeaux, I decided this was the case. It is a good wine, and I can’t help but feel it shows a little too plainly the supple, cool, fruit weight that comes from cold maceration. So I would not say it was a great wine, but it is certainly better than I rated it back in 2012. Perhaps when I revisit other wines I tasted that day we will see whether I was equally parsimonious when it came to my ratings of them as well.
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