Wineguider wine reviews

Today we review a $35 Bordeaux from Total Wine.

Dry.  Tight.  Serious.  Great texture and mouth-feel.  Chateau Garraud isn’t fooling around.  It is 69% merlot, 26% cabernet franc, and 5% cabernet sauvignon.  It smells of earth and alcohol, with traces of blackberries and licorice.  The taste:  lots of mouth-drying tannins and oak.  Faint traces of rhubarb and tart cranberry.   Not much fruit.  It’s elegant, and extremely subtle, but not very friendly.  The taste is so tight that it’s hard to appreciate what little complexity is being offered.

If you want a good example of the austere, no-nonsense reds from Bordeaux, Chateau Garraud 2009 is a nice choice, if you aren’t worried about the price.  But for $35, I want either more sex appeal, more flat-out delicious taste, or more complexity.  Although it is very good, at $35 I believe it is simply overpriced.

Not recommended.

EDIT:  I also tried the previous vintage.  The 2008 was much cheaper, at around $20, but was also much less drinkable than the 2009 reviewed here, with literally no fruit and not much else to redeem it.  Not a viable purchase.