2016 Fait Main St Emilion Grand Cru Todeschini Asteria Vineyard

Parker 8x 100-Point Winemaker’s Right Bank Red

We are proud to announce the allocation of one of the most thrilling and delicious wines in our portfolio: the 2016 Fait-Main Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Todeschini Asteria Vineyard. This powerful, full-bodied Right Bank red comes from winemaker Benoit Touquette who has amassed EIGHT Parker Wine Advocate 100-point scores.

For Benoit, who is from Bordeaux but has made Napa Valley his home since 2004, this wine is a glorious return home: A New World convert’s masterful take on one of the most sacred terroirs in France. 

Many of our serious collectors already know Benoit Touquette, whose accomplishments are the stuff of any winemaker’s wildest dreams: He can boast eight 100-point scores from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate in just the last three vintages alone from cult winery Realm Cellars, and has worked with Screaming Eagle winemaker Andy Erickson, as well as with world-famous oenologist Michel Rolland, who is still a close friend and mentor. With a resume like this, some winemakers might be tempted to relax and let the consulting jobs roll in. But Benoit pushed himself to find a way to return to his native roots in France.

In Bordeaux, he applies his magic touch to Cabernet Franc and Merlot, the varieties that comprise Petrus, Cheval Blanc, and Chateau Ausone—some of the most legendary, age-worthy, and expensive wines in the world. With this wine, he sought to marry the Old World with New World opulence.

“I’m not trying to make Napa in Bordeaux,” he told us, “but I wanted to show that wine from Bordeaux doesn’t have to be austere. The wine can maintain the elegance that I love about Bordeaux, but with more seductive fruit intensity like I’m used to with grapes from Napa.”

Benoit’s 2016 Fait-Main is grown on a limestone plateau on the Todeschini property that has been dedicated to viticulture for 500 years. Aged in 50 percent new French oak, this is a powerful, full-bodied expression of Right Bank Bordeaux, seasoned with licorice, cedar spice, and graphite. It is a wine from the most classic of regions, made by a 100-point New World master who has earned his place as a Wine Access favorite.

It was kismet for Benoit to be able to work with the 500-year-old Asteria Vineyard. The Todeschini family, who owns the Saint-Émilion Grand Cru property, had sent their two sons to work harvest in Napa, where they met Benoit. The boys conveyed Benoit’s pedigree, along with his humility and disarming sense of humor, to their parents, who ended up granting him the rare opportunity to cherry-pick a preferred parcel. “The fruit is insanely good,” Benoit says of the Asteria Vineyard, whose quality he attributes to the bright white, calcareous soils.

The Bordelaise winemakers who were once skeptical of Benoit’s new project are now believers. After tasting the wine, the vintners who doubted his project seemed to have developed amnesia, and now claim to have believed in him the whole time. We certainly have, as have the Wine Access friends who snapped up every last bottle of Benoit’s inaugural vintage of Fait-Main Todeschini Asteria Vineyard. If you missed that one, this is your shot at redemption.

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

• ABV 14.10%
• 1 hour
• Now – 2035
• 50% Cabernet Franc50% Merlot
• Serving temperature – 60°
• Cork