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16/11/2017

Chateau Margaux 2015: Hommage à Paul Pontallier

by Giles Cooper (Head of Marketing & PR)
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Nobody who was fortunate enough to be there will forget the first tasting of Chateau Margaux 2015 at the property back in April 2016. Bordeaux was still reeling at the tragic loss of Paul Pontallier just days earlier. Paul’s son, our great friend Thibault Pontallier, introduced the wine to us with a poignant combination of reverence, admiration and sadness – but still with his family’s trademark smile and positivity. We were already moved but when we began exploring the wine itself, trying our very hardest to be objective, we knew we were in the presence of something extremely special.

We were not the only ones who felt this as The Wine Advocate’s Neal Martin scored the wine at (98-100)pts, stating “The focus and penetration here ranks among the finest that I have tasted at this estate since first coming here in 1997.”

2015 was a landmark year for Chateau Margaux for exciting reasons as well as the desperately unfortunate. Not only was it the bicentenary of the Chateau itself, it saw the inauguration of the remarkable new Lord Norman Foster-designed winery. Both of these architectural elements have come together on the stunning one-off bottle design for the 2015 vintage of Chateau Margaux, which has been decorated with gold and grey silk-screen printing in place of the usual label. As a final tribute to the late, great creator of so many fine vintages, owner Corinne Mentzelopoulos opted to pay ‘Hommage à Paul Pontallier’ with a sign off at the foot of the bottle.

As you can imagine those who bought Chateau Margaux 2015 En Primeur are very satisfied with their purchase – and those who did not will struggle to find any right now as it is unlikely that many cases will be sold, at least in the near term; indeed as of Thursday 16th November AM, there are no cases offered in the market by major merchants.

Unfortunately we sold out entirely of our small allocation of these very special bottles but we will endeavour to keep looking for any more which might become available.