“This wine is so damn good that I keep thinking that maybe someone made a typo with the price. Very, very good value.”- Tamlyn Currin for JancisRobinson.com, 17 points

From one of Europe's oldest wine-growing regions this Braucol (a member of the Cabernet family) is full of old-word charm and has spent 18 months in new and old oak barrels followed by 3 years ageing in bottle, so it was released at a perfect state of maturity. It doesn't take any persuading to show its class, immediately displaying its softness, fleshiness and approachability, with charming aromas of leafy blackcurrant fruit, creamy blueberries, a hint of oak spice and a teasing suggestion of the carpenter's workshop. In the mouth it is juicy and mouth-filling with supple, fruit-soaked tannins, suggestions of cedar and a sweetness of fruit that makes it succulent and velvety. It’s a ringer for a classy Saint Julien, like Chateau Talbot or Chateau Saint Pierre, and when we’ve served it at tastings ‘blind’ from a decanter, we’ve heard jaws dropping when we’ve revealed the price to them (most people placing it as a £20+ Bordeaux).  This is the kind of tipple that would be sipped heartily at Downtown Abbey but equally round a modern and rather more modest dinner table. One of the best value wines in our troupe. 13% alc. Drink now-2032. NB This wine ages incredibly well, like a gentleman’s claret, so our ‘drink by’ date of 2032 is extremely conservative!


Press review:

JancisRobinson.com: “100% Braucol aka Fer Servadou. 18 months in new and old oak barrel.
If I’d picked this up and smelt the wine without looking at the bottle, I’d have thought: Chinon. Rain on graphite; kiss of redcurrant. Then tasted it and thought: Bourgueil. Graphite and granite; guitar string of redcurrant on a city rooftop at midnight. It’s not. It's Braucol. From Gaillac. Graphite, granite, rain, midnight, bitten lips and scarlet blood, tears and kohl-smudged cheek bones, redcurrants crushed in broken glasses. The scrape of concrete under finger tips as you lean over and watch the city anxiously breathe fifteen floors away. It's a wine from the depths of French countryside that somehow tastes like New York. I may have written this last year ... surely, surely not £15.95??? VGV (TC)” 17 points

JancisRobinson.com (previous vintage) “This wine is so damn good that I keep thinking that maybe someone made a typo with the price... should the 1 have been a three, or a four? £34.95? Surely, surely not £14.95? It's the second vintage I've tasted, and for the second time it set my spine tingling. For the second time my first thought was, 'hauntingly beautiful'. It's a wine with the mycorrhizal soul of Pinot Noir inside the sumptuous blackcurrant flesh of fine Cabernet Sauvignon inside the earth-leather skin of Gaillac. It is as transparent as light through a gem-cut ruby, transmitting the story of vineyard stones and vintage and variety with unnerving candour. But it's so much more than that. If you've ever sat in an old chapel on an old wooden pew as the sun sets through ancient stained-glass windows and watched the light glow and bend, refracting gently through the rippled glass, long shafts and pools on stones catching silent dust motes, old hand-smelted iron shaping the shapes of glass, you'll know what this wine tastes like. Ruby-red, amethyst-purple fruit, iron, dust, dark lines, old-glass and light-shaft-fine tannins, faint cedar. VVGV (TC). Drink now-2030.” 17 points

Customer comments (including the previous vintage):

”Gosh, that stuff is seriously good. I love cellaring wines for a good few years but may not be able to resist this. It’s drinking beautifully now but would clearly keep going for some significant time yet. Really super. “ - Mr N.L.

“It’s going down alarmingly well!” - Mr. P. B.

“This wine is amazing. It tastes like the love child of a left bank Bordeaux and something scrummy from Tuscany. Could I get another 12?” - Mr. A. P.

“I came across the wine at a dinner party at the weekend. Excellent wine. We could not believe what it was as we tasted alongside some very expensive wines, but were served blind.“ - Mr M.H.

“It’s such a lovely wine.” - Mr K.B.