Bordeaux Red Blends from Bordeaux, France

Merlot 90%, Cabernet Sauvignon 10%

Purchase Price: $12.98

Wine Enthusiast 90, ElsBob 86

ABV 14%

A deep garnet to deep ruby wine, with aromas of black fruits, medium bodied, strong tannins verging on overpowering and acidic.  Sub 90 wines always go better with spicy or tomato-based appetizers such as meatballs in a marinara sauce or aged cheeses such as cheddar, blue, or Gouda.

A good wine at an elevated price. I wouldn’t pay more than $8-9 for this wine. Currently the wine ranges from $12-15.

Trivia: In the 17th century, the Médoc, now home to legendary estates like Château Margaux and Château Latour, was a marshland, better known for corn than Cabernet. Dutch masters of hydraulic engineering and maritime trade drained the swamps, transforming them into arable land ideal for vineyards. Their aim was strategic rather than altruistic: to buy Bordeaux wine and sell it to the English at a modest profit, or a ludicrous one, if the winds blew favorably.

Windmills pumped water into manmade canals that emptied into the Gironde estuary, terraforming the landscape into a system of trade, terroir, tale, and endless lore. Though water management continues today, steam and electric pumps have long replaced the windmills. Most were dismantled or left to decay, their blades stilled by steam and electric pumps.

One survivor, the restored 18th-century Moulin de Lansac and another, depicted on the wine label shown above, Moulin de Mallet, were not water-pumpers but grain-grinders. Moulin in French translates to grain-grinder, turning wind into flour rather than marsh into vineyard. Still, it stands as a quiet admission of simpler times.

Dutch windmills turning. Pleistocene gravels emerging. French vines growing.

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind “ by Noel Harrison, The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968.