1990 Château Sociando-Mallet, Haut-Medoc, Red Bordeaux, France.
I’ve always loved Château Sociando-Mallet and it was a thrill to enjoy this 1990, even though it is a bit past its peak, it was wonderful, deeply layered and even held up nicely with sunny an outdoor meal, which included lamb, grilled asparagus, Greek pastry with feta cheese and some garden vegetables. The still full bodied palate has plenty of richness, but with loads of earth and leathery notes with dried cherry, reduced raspberry, stewed plum, fig and mulberry fruits, bramble, incense, wilted roses, bell pepper, loam, old cedar, minty anise, faint creme de cassis, pencil shavings, meaty sous bois, cigar wrapper and sticky lavender. With air you gets decayed forest leafs and tilled soil notes, but the color and fruit holds on with a sense of faded beauty, I can appreciate it for its former glory and the wine’s almost will to hold on and be rewarding, even as it clearly doesn’t have many more days of pleasure ahead. This was a delicious surprise and I am grateful to my friend Alex Lallos, who has stashed some lesser known and some very famous Bordeaux bottles in his cellar, and for which I’m thankful of his generosity in opening a few for me and a small group of enthusiasts that meet up once and a while. Sociando-Mallet, as I said, is a favorite, along with the likes of Château Haut-Bailly, Château Calon Ségur, Château Leoville-Poyferre, Château Lynch-Bages, Château Beychevelle, Château Haut-Bages Libéral, Château Cantemerle and Château Cantenac Brown, all of which are or used be exceptionally affordable “Left Bank” Bordeaux options. It’s wine like this that remind me to drink more Bordeaux and put away a few bottles again, even though the world has moved towards more immediate pleasures, because they are experiences that still very much excite me. The Château Sociando-Mallet, set on a beautiful gravel terroir overlooking the Gironde Estuary, is good Cabernet Sauvignon country and the wines are led by it, with most vintages seeing 50 to 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, with a good dose of Merlot, typically in the 40% range and with either some Petit Verdot, as seen here and or Cab Franc, though not a big factor in the final blends.
Château Sociando-Mallet is an unclassified growth Bordeaux producer within the appellation Haut-Médoc, which is pretty up there on the “Left Bank” of the river in the Cabernet zone of the Bordeaux wine region, in the commune of Saint-Seurin-de-Cadourne, just to the north of Saint-Estèphe. This has always been in my lifetime in wine a real place to get value, some of my earliest Bordeaux experiences were with Sociando-Mallet and when I recently had this wine, which was brought out blind, I was immediately on the right track, with my palate memory seemingly on point here picking up the region’s loamy and minty nature. The dark hued1990 Sociando-Mallet was made from a blend of 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 42% Merlot and 5% Petit Verdot, though many people swear they get some Cab Franc notes here, it really is the Haut-Medoc’s terroir that picks up that Chinon or Anjou like bell pepper note, even in ripe years like this one. The history here is interesting, with the current Château being situated on what was in 1633 the residence of a Basque nobleman named Sièvre Sociando, and that was the first documentation of the estate and any mention of its importance. After its acquisition in around 1850 by Madame Mallet, it became more known as a wine growing property and took on its current name. It saw a brief bit of notoriety in the late 1800s when it was recorded in the1883 Cocks & Féret directory, which later become an influential Bordeaux guide, but after that things went down hill with wars and tough times. In fact Château Sociando-Mallet was simply forgotten and was a derelict property of vastly reduced land by the time it was bought in 1969 by Jean Gautreau, who’s family still runs it, he was a négociant from Lesparre and is credited to bringing true respect to this widely known estate. Nowadays, there’s about 20,000 cases produced of the Grand Vin here and they are well priced, usually in the $40 range and especially in good years, which have firm tannic structure and can and do age well, are very good values. I must say, I didn’t expect the depth and robust nature in this 1990 Sociando-Mallet, but I was, again very impressed and look forward to searching out some modern versions with maybe 10 to 15 years of age, and I see many in the 40 to 50 dollar range, with 2014, 2015 and 2016s looking like good bets.
($135 Est.) 93 points, grapelive