Chateau Margaux 1er GCC 1966 (1 x 750mL), France. Cork.

Exceptional building and the most important wine estate in the village of Margaux in the Bordeaux wine region, and a First Growth in the 1855 classification.

Ch Margaux was one of the four New French Clarets captured in the Anglo-French wars at the beginning of the 18th century, and sold in the coffee houses of the City of London. Thomas Jefferson on his visit to Bordeaux in 1787 picked it out as one of the 'four vineyards of first quality'. Sequestered in the French Revolution after the execution of the owner, it was bought by the Marquis de la Colonilla in 1804 and rebuilt in the First Empire style, by L. Combes, as we know it today — the grandest Château of the Haut-Médoc. After passing through several hands, shares were bought by a Bordeaux wine merchant, Fernand Ginestet, in 1925, and the family share was slowly increased to give his son Pierre Ginestet complete ownership in 1949. Also a merchant, he was badly hit by the 'energy crisis' in the early 1970s and had to seek a buyer. The French government refused to allow the American conglomerate National Distillers to buy it, but in 1977, the Château was acquired by the French grocery and finance group Félix Potin, headed by the Greek André Mentzelopoulos, domiciled in France. A great deal of money was spent on restoring the neglected vineyard, chais, and mansion and Émile Peynaud was taken on as consultant. André Mentzelopoulos died suddenly in December 1980, and first his wife Laura and then his daughter Corinne took over control, assisted by Paul Pontallier, the young director who joined the estate in 1983 (coincidentally one of the property's most successful vintages). In 1992, in a complicated international deal involving Perrier mineral water, the Italian Agnelli family of Fiat motor cars became involved in ownership of the estate, but Corinne Mentzelopoulos remained in charge and took a personal stake in the property.

The 82 ha of dark grape varieties are planted with roughly 75 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, 20 per cent Merlot, and 5 per cent of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Average total red wine output is about 30,000 cases, of which the resurrected Pavillon Rouge de Ch Margaux is the excellent second wine. A hitherto somewhat uninspiring white wine Pavillon Blanc was transformed into an ambitious dry wine. It is made in a new and separate temperature-controlled cellar, with barrel fermentation, exclusively from Sauvignon Blanc grapes planted on 12 ha of separate vineyard.