Chateau des Matards was a wine we poured BTG at my job a few years back when I was first getting into wine, though we had their entry level wine (M de Matards, I think?). This is one of their flagship wines, and only a few dollars more expensive. I saw it at a local shop and picked it up for the sake of nostalgia.
It’s a bit of a strange one. Where the entry level cuvée was more stone fruited and fresh (it’s a wine I remember in great detail for some reason), this one has a significant presence of oak in the nose. There’s baked apple and graham cracker up front. New world Chard vibes, very strange.
The palate is luckily more zesty, tart, and fruit-forward. There’re Meyer lemon and apple flavors. The acidity is front-weighted, and the oaky and spicy flavors appear in a toned down way at the back. Some of that white BDX saltiness too. The finish drops off a bit, unfortunately.
This is not a particularly noteworthy wine, and not really what I’m looking for in my white wines, but I thought it was interesting to compare to my previous experiences. I think I preferred the M des Matards, though I was much, much less experienced back then.
by christisanders1