Chateau Margaux is one of the four, then five Premier Crus (First Growths) of the 1855 classification of the Medoc.  The Medoc is the glorious part of the Bordeaux region that makes everyone think of wine.  Chateau Margaux had a rather famous omniscient advertiser for a while; the late Margaux Hemingway.  Legend had it, that she was conceived after her parents had enjoyed a magnum of Château Margaux (true or not, it does make for a great story).

Margaux is the name of the commune in the district of the Medoc which is in the Department of the Gironde.  I may talk about this classification system during another chat, which is the joy of being a raconteur.  Margaux is one of the areas that is really known as Claret as any good Anglophile would say.  There are several important chateaus in the commune of Margaux, but there is only one Chateau Margaux.  A very happy point for all the other chateaus in Margaux, because none of the other great communes have a world-class winery with the commune’s name so prominently linked like Chateau Margaux.  There is no First Growth called Chateau Pauillac.  This is why even a generic blended bottle of Margaux gets to share the sunshine and prestige of this famous château.

I have had the good fortune of having tried three different vintages of this famed château. One was from the outstanding vintage of 1961, but that will be a story to be told at another time, because of the unique situation that I enjoyed it.  The bottles that I will reference today are from the 1967 and 1976 vintages.  The 1967 vintage year was an abundant and very dependable year from the Medoc.  Unfortunately I do not recall the dinner party or the dinner that accompanied this storied wine, but I do recall the wine.  It had a deep color, a wonderful bouquet or nose and a taste that is still recorded in some back remote corner of my brain.  This was actually one of the first Margaux wines that I had ever had, by good fortune, and ever since then my “taste memory” will remind me that the other Margaux wines that I have had don’t measure up to my ’67 Chateau Margaux.  It really is not fair to the other wines, but that is what tasting does to you.  As for the 1976 Chateau Margaux we had that at dinner at The English Grill in The Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.  The 1976 vintage was not a great year, but my brother-in-law brought it to the restaurant as he wanted to see how it would fare, as he had a couple more bottles in his cellar.  It had good color and a decent nose, but for me, it did not compare to the 1967.  It did enhance a wonderful meal, which was a joy in its own right.  That was the case until I did have the ’61 Chateau Margaux.

For a working man of modest means to have had three bottles of this wine is just pure heaven on Earth.