About the Wine

"At Giscours, a wine does not live by itself. It is a reflection of the place, its environment, and the people who make it."

Just over 3 miles away from world renowned Château Margaux, is located Château Giscours a 3rd Growth Classified Châteaux. The history of this estate dates back nearly 700 years ago. 

It was seized in the French Revolution and sold to Americans before the turn of the 19th century. It then changed hands many times while slowly falling into disrepair. It wasn’t until Nicolas Tari purchased the estate in 1954 that it started to make an upward trend.The real step toward living up to its classification is when Alexander van Beek took over as the managing director. He replanted much of the vineyard with Cabernet Sauvignon and even moved the harvesting back to hand picking. Around the 2000 vintage, this estate really started producing top-tier wines. 

Chateau Giscours's terroir is impressive, as you could have imagined, being located in one of the finest terroirs in the Bordeaux region. Its dry and meager gravel soils result in charming and delicate wines like the 2015 Chateau Giscours Margaux.

2015 was a great year for the Left Bank. Vinous Media blessed this year with a 95pt review, stating that "Bordeaux enjoyed its strongest vintage in a number of years in 2015," and called "Margaux and Saint-Julien  the clear winners on the Left Bank."

Aging: 17 months in French oak barrels, 50% new. 

Tasting Notes: 70 % Cabernet Sauvignon, 25 % Merlot, 5 % Petit Verdot. This wine offers a nose with black fruit aromas and lightly spicy notes. In the mouth, it is a delicious wine, with spicy caramelized notes and a beautiful long finish. 

Reviews

This firm wine shows the tannic side of the vintage. Those tannins are dusty, enriched with black-currant fruits and a dense backdrop. The wine is concentrated and elegant, very age-worthy, and not likely to be ready before 2025. ~97 Points, Wine Enthusiast.

Plenty of violets and dark berries on offer here. This has a striking sense of purity as well as an energetic, regal palate. The structure is impressively groomed with effortless depth and length. A standout wine. Try from 2022.~ 96 Points, James Suckling

The 2015 Giscours has a beautiful, clean, pure bouquet of generous ripe black cherry, raspberry and crushed violet aromas that could only come from Margaux. The medium-bodied palate is quite dense but wonderfully poised, offering sappy red fruit and very fine tannin and delivering impressive detail on the bay leaf and tea leaf finish. Alexandre van Beek oversaw one of the best Giscours in recent years. Tasted blind at the Southwold 2015 Bordeaux tasting.  ~95 Points, Vinous Media.

Deep, plush fruit which is hard to push through at first, it resists rather than gives way. There are layers of muscular fruit on the palate with some gorgeous touches of tobacco and charcoal. This is one to age - and to double-decant if you're thinking about opening it up in the next decade. 50% new oak. ~95 Points, Decanter. 

The 2015 Giscours is a blend of 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot. That is in stark comparison to older vintages, for example, the 2000 Giscours that was 50/50 Cabernet and Merlot. This vintage is matured in 50% new oak. Winemaker Alexandre Van Beek told me that the 2015 "...reflects the true terroir at Giscours that created the great wines of the 1960s and 1970s." That is something to live up to with fresh memories of 1961 in my brain. The bouquet is very intense and almost "untamed" at first, but it calms down in the glass, revealing attractive scents of blackberry, raspberry, cedar, and graphite. This is a Giscours determined to make a good impression...and it does. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, very pure, a little spicier than recent vintages, adorned with a gentle crescendo in the mouth towards a really quite fantastic, tensile, complex, and compelling finish. Having tasted the 1961 and 1970 Giscours just a few months ago, I wager that the 2015 will be the best since 1961. Time to fall back in love with this great Margaux property. 94-96 Points, Wine Advocate. 

The nose is fine, racy, mineral, silky, and gourmand, and offers a nice grain, a beautiful elegance as well as depths. It reveals fine notes of blackberry, cassis, wild strawberry, and wild/fresh raspberry combined with hints of graphite, chocolate, slight hints of licorice as well as very discreet hints of Cuben pepper (background). The palate is fruity, well-balanced, juicy, silky, aerial, and slightly powerful and offers a nice definition, a nice grain, suavity, a nice acid frame as well as finesse. On the palate, this wine expresses notes of black cherry and blackberry associated with slight notes of raspberry, redcurrant, touches of colas, licorice stick as well as subtle touches of caramelized oak, chocolate / tonka bean, and subtle touches of tea/vanilla. Good length. ~94 Points, VertdeVin

Polished and rounded in feel, with a solid core of plum and blackberry compote flavors, lined with light hints of charcoal, tobacco, and violet. Nice perfumy tobacco and warm tar notes show on the finish. Very well-integrated, making this approachable now, but there's no rush. Best from 2020 through 2035. ~93 Points, Wine Spectator. 

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