2008 Chateau Magence Graves Rouge

The Bordeaux the French Didn’t Want to Share

The 2008 Château Magence Rouge from Graves is as under-the-radar as they come. This 11-year old, perfectly-cellared, mint-condition Bordeaux was never submitted for review to any critic, and the only reason we know about it is because of a savvy importer friend of ours. At $20 a bottle, this is one of our best value Bordeaux reds, and a steal from the highly-prized 2008 vintage.

Not only is the region of Graves responsible for icons like Château Haut-Brion, but Graves is also a secret source for locals—the French love to drink everyday priced Graves rouge with dinner most nights, which is why treasures like today’s aged 2008 Magence red, brimming with black currant fruit, tobacco, and cedar spice, and priced to drink nightly, rarely make it to U.S. shores.

We’d never heard of Château Magence, but sipping it along with mushroom burgers two weeks ago at the home of an importer friend—it was sheer heaven. “The family who lives at the end of Rue Emile Zola in Graves, with Haut-Brion’s vines literally on the other side of a simple fence, isn’t drinking Haut-Brion,” our friend told us. “They’re drinking a wine like Magence Rouge,” he said, fresh from a recent hunting expedition in Bordeaux. “We drank Magence with burgers topped with wild-mushroom Duxelles on fresh brioche buns every day after trekking through the woods.”

Full, and impressed by this ‘08 Bordeaux Rouge, we took a bottle to Wine Access HQ to sample it under more objective circumstances—and again, it stole the show. We called our friend and asked for every bottle we could get. One thing to note: critical to success was an hour-long decant. The wine is so alive and fresh, it needs time to mingle with the air, to regain consciousness, to come out of its 11-year coma. Give it time, and it will awake and astound.

Robert Parker’s vintage report on 2008 is all but lost to the feverish pitch of praise for 2009, but take note of what he said about Pessac-Léognan and Graves. His tastings confirmed that the wines possessed “exceptional density of ripe,” “incredibly sweet, velvety tannins,” “very fresh, crisp acids,” and “a precision, nuanced, fresh character,” making them “somewhat reminiscent of the way the top wines presented themselves in 1996 and 1986, but the finest 2008s are more dense.”

Because of cool weather, low yields, and historically long hang-time, producers in Graves were able to achieve “incredibly sweet tannins as well as ripe fruit,” Parker noted, adding this kicker: “the freshness and high level of extract and tannins will allow them to age for 20-30+ years.”

This wine has slumbered in Graves since bottling over a decade ago. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to age your Bordeaux wines, today is your lucky day. For those of you with those Haut-Brion’s slumbering still, they have another decade or three to go. Drink Magence while they mature. It’s a win-win.

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 12.50%
• 1 hour
• Drink Up
• 55% Cabernet Sauvignon35% Cabernet Franc10% Merlot
• Serving temperature – 60°
• Cork