Domaine de l'Esclade 1994 Chateâu Carsin Bordeaux, France 56,60 FIM ~$12.50 I'd like to take off my hat (if I had one), bow towards south-south-west, and remain in that posture for a respectful moment! - Fortunately wine produces often such sensations, but now it has to do both with a mind sensitized by an enjoyable wine, and a personally important matter. After many difficulties and innumerable disappointments I've finally sipped a French wine in this reasonable price category that still keeps my palate trembling. - Savage talk! I can hear many saying that - but I'm not drinking with anyone else's taste-buds. If I were one of Allah's children and allowed only finally in heaven to sniff and sip the products of those serpent-like grapevines, I believe the local gate-keeper might not, in his great wisdom and expertise, even let me near those drinks, but would throw at me a pile, growing yard by yard in height, of alredy yellowing sheets of paper with the ever-repeating word of Chateâu on the top line. Now that I'm not yet quite in need of knocking those gates, I note with satisfaction that Chateâu Carsin's courage has borne mighty fruits. To make a vinyard, located in the core of old Bordeuax, into a totally new shape and to begin producing wine in a new world manner! One can still leap forward with bold and crazy ideas! Even though Domaine de l'Esclade 1994 may not open "the heavenly gates" with it's complexity and many layers, one immediately notices a structure of great potentiality. Spices, hues of oak, and enough tannines to keep this wine in a good trim and alive for the promised 3-4 years. And right now I find this wine to be both virile and balanced, and very, very enjoyable. I'd like to say that they've found a wine type with an address - so I say it. Wine-making expertise, goal-seeking orientation, and a love for wine that comes close to sportsmanship, seems to be a good combination. In practise Carsin's combination is made of the most unlikely ingredients in France: Finnish ownership, Australian winemaker and local tending of the vinyards and the cellars. The times they are a changing? If the above rises a question of patriotic nepotism, all I can say is that I'm not an Australian and that you should let your own tastebuds decide. P.S. Château Carsin's web page is one of the most elegant, and at least most detailed presentations of a vinyard in the net that I know of. The few years of this château under new order, and their pioneering position as wine producers in the region undoubtedly give rise to open information - and I'd hate to see it end even if they grew big and old. I recommend clicking your left mouse-button right here.

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