Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: a bargain bunch of ‘defrocked’ clarets

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issue 28 September 2024

Whoop! Whoop! Hang out the bunting, clear out your cellars, dust off your corkscrews: it’s the highlight of many a wine-lover’s year and time for our annual offer of ‘defrocked’ clarets from our confrères at FromVineyardsDirect.

I know you know this but I’m going to remind you anyway – these wines come from the most famous of all Bordeaux estates, the absolute top. They are the excess production or the wines made from younger vines that don’t suit the estates’ grands vins. They are made in the same cellars as the grands vins, by the same winemaking teams and with the same devotion, and although they might not quite have the same depth and concentration as the grands vins, they boast the same impeccable pedigree and at knockdown prices.

I’m not allowed to name the estates in question, but I can hint at them with the hidden clues below and, being the intelligent, canny Spectator readers that you are, you can easily identify them.

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