Our Provenance Guarantee
Purchase with confidence. All of our wines are selectively sourced and thoroughly inspected for authenticity and signs of poor storage. Accepted bottles are preserved in our climate-controlled cellar until they reach your doorstep. We have no storefront and no walk-in traffic, so nothing is moved or handled between inspection and shipping.
The bottle you see photographed is the bottle you receive (or fundamentally identical when multiple bottles are listed), and our commitment to you is that it arrives as represented. If it doesn’t, we want to hear from you.
Ratings & Tasting notes:
98+ points Vinous (Antonio Galloni, February 2012)
Galloni found the 1986 the more emotionally moving of the wines that night. Still incredibly youthful, it showed incredible focus and depth, all backed by considerable structure. Hard as it was to believe, on that evening it appeared to be some years away from peaking. Striking in every way.
98 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
A magnificent example of Chateau Margaux and one of the most tannic, backward Margauxs of the last 50 years, the 1986 continues to evolve at a glacial pace. The color is still a dense ruby/purple with just a hint of lightening at the rim. With several hours of aeration, the aromatics become striking, with notes of smoke, toast, creme de cassis, mineral, and white flowers. Very full-bodied, with high but sweet tannin, great purity, and a very masculine, full-bodied style, this wine should prove nearly immortal in terms of its aging potential. It is beginning to budge from its infantile stage and approach adolescence. Anticipated maturity: 2008-2050. Last tasted, 12/02.
Cult Wines International Notes:
Château Margaux is the largest of the First Growths and, by long consensus, the most elegant — the reference point for a style built on perfume and finesse rather than power. The estate lies east of the village of Margaux in the Médoc, its gravel-topped soils over chalky clay particularly suited to Cabernet Sauvignon, which accounts for the greater part of the blend. Ranked a First Growth in 1855, the property entered its modern golden era after the Mentzelopoulos family acquired it in 1977 and installed Paul Pontallier, whose long tenure produced the run of wines on which the château’s current reputation rests.
1986 was a Cabernet vintage of exceptional tannic density across the Médoc, and Margaux made one of the most structured wines in its modern history. Harvest began on 1 October. The wine remains dark and slow to move: cassis, red and black fruit, plum skin and violet pastilles over cedar, cigar box, smoke, toast, cold stone, white flowers and a grippy note of smoldering charcoal. Medium to full-bodied, with fine but abundant chalky tannin, superb minerality and a ferrous tension on the finish. This is Margaux in its strict, classical register rather than its perfumed one, and it has been characterized as a wine that has developed at a glacial pace. Reviewers agree it rewards several hours of aeration, and that considerable life remains ahead of it.
Bottle Size:
750 mL
Storage History:
Stored in a climate-controlled cellar since release.
Condition:
Some mild capsule corrosion as shown. Otherwise, outstanding condition.
Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold. Photographs have been taken from different angles in order to exhibit the exact item condition.
