TOP

Château Talbot 1996

After diving back into the 1989 vintage on three recent occasions – with wines from Philippe Foreau, Chasse-Spleen and Coutet – I thought I should I should at least try to focus on a different vintage this week. And so to 1996, a vintage I learned to love – on the left bank, anyway – during the early years of my Bordeaux explorations. I bought a handful of bottles of the 1996 Château Talbot about 25 years ago, after being impressed when it shone against some stiff competition in a 1996 Bordeaux line-up. It is about eight years since I last pushed it into the Weekend Wine spotlight though, so this is another of my random cellar ‘revisits’, in which I check in on a wine to see how it is coming along.

Ask your average Bordeaux scribe for a random fact about Château Talbot and it is very likely you will be regaled with the saga of John Talbot (1387 – 1453), the Earl of Shrewsbury (to do so is mandatory – like fizzy rosé in February and Beaujolais Nouveau in November, it is in the wine columnist’s rulebook). A Medieval knight sent to face the French at Castillon, despite having sworn never to take up arms against them, Talbot lost his life in the final battle of the Hundred Years’ War. It is said that Château Talbot is named for him, although I have never bought into this rather apocryphal tale; the truth is there is no evidence he owned any vines in the Bordeaux region at all. Still, why let the absence of facts ruin a good yarn? If you’re interested, I explore other (equally tenuous) explanations for this property’s name in my Château Talbot profile.

By the 19th century the property – at this time known as Talbot d’Aux – was in the hands of Henri Raymond d’Aux de Lescout, not a knight like John Talbot, but certainly of noble birth. His family retained possession until the end of the century, after which it passed through several pairs of hands before it was acquired by Désiré Cordier (1861 – 1940). It has remained in the ownership of this family ever since. Today it is – if I have counted the generations correctly – Désiré’s great great grandchildren Philippine, Marguerite and Gustave Bignon who are increasingly assuming responsibility for the running of the domaine, taking over from their mother Nancy Bignon-Cordier. And one of the best decisions they and their parents took was the appointment of Jean-Michel Laporte, back in 2018.

Château Talbot 1996

Perhaps rather than waxing lyrical about John Talbot, it is on Jean-Michel Laporte this Bordeaux scribe should focus, as I think it is fair to say he is responsible for a large part of the Talbot revival we have seen in recent years. Originally from Toulouse, Jean-Michel started his winemaking career as a cellar rat in Mendocino County in California; once bitten by the bug he returned to his home town to study before then relocating to Bordeaux where he made his name. He rose to prominence at Château La Conseillante, where he was technical director from 2003 until 2015, after which he worked as a courtier for a while, before in 2018 he took up his current position as managing director at Château Talbot.

Despite its ancient heritage, Château Talbot is forward-looking, driven partly by the Bignon-Cordier family, partly by Jean-Michel Laporte. There is a move to improve the quality of the vineyard, replanting Cabernet Sauvignon using vines propagated by massal selection, ongoing trials of organic viticulture, a focus on maturity at harvest, and a high-quality selection which includes optical sorting for the grand vin (with densitometric sorting for the second wine) and vinification in relatively new facilities, including a modern barrel cellar which could easily double up as a film set should there ever be a third series of Space 1999. All this has had a positive effect on the style of the wine, which in recent years has shown greater density, polish and cleaner fruit. The wines were once renowned for their tendency towards Brettanomyces, so this latter quality is a welcome one.

During my drinking years I have gradually become less and less tolerant of Brett, and perhaps this is why I have not dived into older vintages of Talbot as much as I have some other Bordeaux châteaux. It is many years since I tasted the 1978 and I liked it at the time; I saw no Brett, but then as this was two decades ago, was my palate as attuned to Bretty aromas then as it is now? I am quite certain it was not. The 1969, tasted more recently, was a rather piquant affair, but probably not a bad result in a vintage where a hot summer was followed by washout rains during the harvest. Happily the 1996 – one of my favourite vintages of recent decades – has never displayed any such piquancy. Or Brett for that matter. I really could do with a more in-depth exploration of older vintages though.

After a couple of hours in the decanter the 1996 Château Talbot is looking just fine, with a great colour, evidently maturing but still with plenty of vigour. It has a maturing and classically styled nose, with a fabulously ferruginous character, filled with haematite and iron minerals, softened with notes of black truffle and olive, tobacco and tar. The structure on the palate has no lesser beauty than the nose, polished yet savoury and brilliantly bitter, with layers of peppered tannins set against a backdrop of tar, black olive and smoked blackberry. There is delicious harmony and cohesion here, but also still a wonderful grain and grip to it, which persists into the long and charged finish. This is a really fine Talbot, evolving slowly, showing delicious character now, but still with many decades ahead of it. Drink and enjoy now, or hold off and enjoy in the future. The alcohol on the label is a very precise 12.8%. 95/100 (12/8/24)

Read more in:

Find Château Talbot 1996 on Wine Searcher:

Find all Château Talbot wines on Wine Searcher: