The Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016 is a blend of 95% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc sourced from contract vineyards in the Saint-Emilion region of the Right Bank of Bordeaux in western France.The Legende brand is Barons de Rothschild (Lafite) line of Bordeaux regional wines. The wines (except for one) are not sourcing grapes from Rothschild estate vineyards, but from growing in some elite growing areas. This makes Legende wines more affordable.Saint-Emilion is on the Right Bank of the Dordogne River, along with Pomerol are the premier Merlot regions. The Right Bank features Merlot-based blends with Cabernet Franc and sometimes Cabernet Sauvignon.The Left Bank will have Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blends along with smaller amounts of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. Bordeaux wines come at all price points from thousands of dollars for Grand Cru wines to ten bucks for standard blends.The top growing regions, such as Saint-Emilion tend to fetch higher prices with Cru wines at the top end. The Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016 showed, with a quick check of the web, to be selling around twenty-five dollars. There was a wide range of prices on either side of $25.It is not uncommon for the average American wine drinker to have limited knowledge of French wines. Bordeaux wines are very location and producer oriented, the who and the where are extremely important. When your knowledge of French wine is limited to reading an article in Wine Spectator while in your Dentist waiting room, who and where can be a mystery.That is where the Legende brand and Barons de Rothschild (Lafite) come in. They have been producing wine in Bordeaux at a high level for a couple of hundred years. You could do worse than choosing them as a starting point.The Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016, even though it is a wine from a premier region, is a drink-it-now wine, not meant to be cellared. The current vintage is 2016 and that shows this blend went through a fairly complex production process.The simpler the process the sooner the wine is available for sale. So a wine that needed four years to achieve its balance got the full winemaking treatment.The Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016 is 95% Merlot (their website shows the bland to be 85% Merlot and 14% Cabernet Franc, but the back label gives the (95%/5% blend) which by California wine rules would be labeled Merlot and not a blend.Merlot has a softer more rounded feel while Cabernet Franc is tighter and more intense while also adding a different flavor. So the Cab Franc gives the Merlot a little boost.Merlot, for me, especially in the usual value price range is a blending grape. It does not make for bad wine, but it is not memorable. I have had excellent Merlot that was not from France but not often. Merlot from Bordeaux changes all that. Merlot from Bordeaux and Saint-Emilion is outstanding.The Legende was aged for 12 months with only 40% of the wine in French oak barrels. They did not specify how the other 60% was aged, but since the wine was fermented in stainless steel vats these were probably used. The alcohol content is a balanced 13.5%.Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016 Tasting NotesThe color is shiny black cherry red. The nose is blackberry, licorice, light herbs, lightly spiced, a little black pepper, and plum. This is a soft, smooth flavorful wine with an edge from the Cabernet Franc and the tannins.It starts with ripe, intense blackberry and licorice, this wine is both soft and smooth and sleek and intense. The Merlot and the Cab Franc show themselves well. There are additional flavors of blueberry, black pepper, raspberry, and dark chocolate, but not sweet.The tannins are there, you can sense them, but they do not interfere with the flavors. The acidity is seamless and balanced.The SummaryThe Legende Saint-Emilion Bordeaux 2016 is a Grand Cru producer’s version of an affordable drin
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[Music]
hey it’s day from cheap winf
finder.com for another one of our little
Companion podcast for www chwine
fighter.com
going on our 12th year riding about
wines that everybody
drinks and for some
reason a lot of people don’t write about
so but we do and this time we’re going
up a little bit um in h not in classes I
drink good wine all time for a value
price but with the holidays coming on we
got some bero from
um Baron dech left Fe but the legend the
legend is the um is their brand uh of
export wines and this one is from St
emang
2016 Bordeaux is Blends uh in case I’m
going to be real basic I don’t want to
most you might know it maybe you don’t
Left Bank right Bank um this is right
Bank uh pomarol and
samon Mero and most of those are Mero
with cop FR Mero is a softer little
rounder cop Frank’s a little more
focused a little harder now the other
side of the bank uh is basically wines
that
are showing off the interplay between
Mero and cabinet saon
so this is Mero this is 95% Mero 5% C
Fran
from
from Barony love Ro child left feet
highend but this is not from their
Vineyards this is not their cage they
have their own Barrel making facility
their high-end wines um are really
high-end wines Grand crew the highest
the most expensive bottle in the legend
line and there’s a whole line of all the
the the main growing areas the highest
one actually is from lefit Vineyards and
use the leit cerid but this isn’t this
is purchased grapes um you know uh
and so but it’s a little bit less
expensive than you would um because say
Aman is a you know one of the Premier
growing regions in the world and maybe
that in pomaro you can’t get much better
Mero that’s one thing um and if you’re
drinking in the value price range Mero
isn’t really to me anyway uh a player
it’s kind of um that’s nice next one you
kind of forget you drank at the you know
what did I drink last week oh yeah it
was Mero it works better in Blends
because it gives a little softness
little roundness to it but um in
Bordeaux it’s rocks it’s like oh my God
why is why is marllo so good here not
that good everywhere else though I have
had some Napa MOS you know at time to
time time and I had some Washington
State meros and even some Australian
meros in my time but that’s few and far
between most time it’s like uh maybe
this would be a better blending grape
and uh at 95%
Mero in California this could very
easily be and it probably would be
labeled a Mero and that and not just a
St ambon you know in France who made it
and where it was made is everything what
the grapes were is kind of beside the
point that’s what you get here so you’re
getting a
high-end but a drink it now wine this is
not made to
be age cellared anything about 40% of
the wine it was aged for a year in
French Oak the other 60% was I think in
stainless deal I’m not I’m not positive
if that was it could be C met um so it’s
not but it’s a 2016 uh the older the
current vintages the more involved the
wine making was
that’s why you see a lot of like $10
wies will be 2018 2019 CU they try to
turn them around as quick as they can um
so they get on the market quicker you
can sell them cheaper and here we got a
wine I think it’s going to be the $25
range that’s got four years of age on it
I mean it took a while for the tannins
and the acidity and the flavors all to
come together so it’s drinkable upon
release and that’s pretty cool it’s good
I’m going to take a sip because I got a
glass of St
em bordeau from um feet in my glass and
I’m going to drink
it yeah mow is Great’s got the soft Edge
to it and the C fron not a lot 5% but it
just gives this little tightness around
the edges so you got this plump juicy
tight thing back and forth going
on it’s really kind of interesting it’s
pretty kind of cool and you know if you
don’t know which domain or which chatau
to buy wine and you don’t it’s 25 bucks
you know do I just take a chance well if
you got Legend that’s Rothchild that’s
left feet I mean if you’re going to just
try it and you don’t really you know if
you don’t really know what’s happening
don’t know what to choose it’s a really
good way to to go cuz they’ve got 200
years of uh making wine to their credit
and there you go it’s a good wine if
you’re looking for Thanksgiving it would
work it looking for the holidays it
would work so on to the next one we’ll
come up something else keep it cheap
adios and I will talk to you pretty soon
bye-bye