Château Malescot St. Exupéry: The Pastille Margaux

I hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk - Kevin K Tang

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTODnrEoEGU

(with English sub-titles)

Violets. Violets. Violets. Then strawberries and raspberries — and you are already somewhere else.

There are always pastille tones and shades to the red fruit on aeration — that quality of ripe fruit condensed and brightened, like the best children’s soft sweets: a Rowntree’s Pastille, or any of its variants. Almost all vintages then give a brighter, more intense ruby colour; they have lots of interesting dry extract (rose, violets, lavender), with quality freshness (strawberries) and fruit precision (blackcurrant, cranberry, lemon — each flavour vivid and distinct).

Well-structured and reasonably complex, all bottles start with smoky cassis and new oak (mocha coffee and vanilla), good fruit purity (ripe red and dark fruit), a bright core, and well-worked tannins. On the palate, the fruit profile turns complex- always fruity and round with strawberries, raspberries, and blackcurrants.

With suitable fruit length in quality Cru, all vintages are easy without losing intensity; tense without losing balance. And all bottles are excellent for all occasions. However, if you are hunting for a brooding, labyrinthine Margaux, Malescot St. Exupéry may not be the wine for you. But if you want pleasure, precision, and that electric red-fruit signature — it is very much yours.

The stylistics will say: clean, balanced, and unapologetically fruity. A modern wine that knows exactly what it is.

The Malescote St Exupery style is reflected in the technicals summarised as follows. Vinification/Maturation/Temperature-controlled and matured in predominantly new oak (typically around 80%, though this varies by vintage); hence, the wine is bold and powerful. All vintages undergo malolactic fermentation in barrel, depending on the vintage, and are aged on lees with stirring; hence, there is always adequate intensity, complexity, and textural touch. Mostly 13–14 months of barrel ageing before being racked without fining or filtration — hence that characteristic creaminess on the mid-palate. ABV is just right; almost all vintages are at 13.5%, so this wine is full-bodied. All vintages are 56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, and 8% Petit Verdot; the varied grapes create greater complexity over time. The mineral finish is more from the soil, gravel overlying chalk or marl, slopes towards the Gironde. Fruit is picked into trays to prevent crushing, thereby preserving freshness.

2007 has lifted acidity on the palate, leading to an extended finish. It now wears the traits of a classic claret — complexity, maturity, tertiary depth, and fruit that refuses to quit.

2011 is lean and slightly austere, but there is real elegance in that restraint; a wine that rewards patience.

2013 is a vintage of quiet refinement — mid-weight, with gentle tannins, red cherry and violet aromatics, and a finish of surprising harmony. It is precisely this exotic, un-Left-Bank-like red fruit — so unlike the expected macho Margaux — that is the greatest paradoxical attraction of Malescot. Think Rowntree's Pastilles: ripe fruit condensed into vivid, jewel-bright flavours — blackcurrant, strawberry, cranberry, lemon — each distinct, each singing. Pair it with Japanese strawberry chocolate, and you are in a different kind of heaven.

2014 is floral, solid, seamless, and long; its fruit profile drums to a different beat — blueberry and cool minerality leading the way. 2015 is easy to love and impossible to resist. Farr wrote aptly, 'inky colour with a dense black fruit nose. The palate is rich with mouth-filling tannins and a glycerol texture, which gives the blackcurrant and cherry fruit an oozing ripeness. The finish is pure cassis with a bit of creamy vanilla. Plush with no hard edges. Edited.'

2017 is tightly wound, mineral-driven, with good fruit held in check by a dry, focused finish — a wine still finding its voice.

Across all these vintages, one truth holds: Malescot St. Exupéry does not seduce you with power or intimidate you with structure. It seduces you with pleasure — that bright, condensed, pastille-pure red fruit that arrives like a surprise and stays like a memory. From the lean austerity of 2011 to the plush generosity of 2015, from the quiet refinement of 2013 to the mineral tension of 2017, each bottle is unmistakably itself, and unmistakably Malescot. This is a Margaux that does not ask to be decoded. It asks only to be enjoyed.