Your thoughts on Reignac

Stumbled across this video on YouTube last night, which was kind of interesting:

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, it’s a tasting with 14 experienced tasters going through 13 fancy Bordeaux and one inexpensive Bordeaux (Reignac) from 2001, and the Reignac beats out everything except Angelus. It beats all the first growths, Petrus, Cheval Blanc, and a few others. The video is a little tedious, and of course should be taken with a grain of salt, but it made me curious about the wine nonetheless.

I can’t find the wine available anywhere to try myself here in Connecticut, so I was curious the impressions of those on the board who have had it. A few mentions here seemed promising. CT reviews are pretty middle of the road.

As a side note, funny that the winery’s YouTube page has about a dozen different videos that are essentially different versions of this one tasting. I don’t blame them, I’d do the same thing if I were them. Funny nonetheless.

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Never had the 2001. Apparently pretty good in it’s youth, but didn’t hold up in later tastings (I think 10 years later.) As for Reignac in general, my experiences are only with 3 vintages. I rather liked the 2000. It was good young and developed very nicely but I drank my last one 5-6 years ago. Based on that I also purchased the 2005 and 2008. I intensely dislike the 2008. The 2005 has a very ashen side, but also some redeeming deep, dark fruit. Due to this, I don’t bother anymore with this ‘value’ chateau.

I think a lot of people, like myself, dabbled in Reignac because of that GJE tasting, and I think the net of it for me and others who did so is that it’s a perfectly fine early-drinking Bordeaux, but that’s about it.

I’m not sure what happened in the tasting, maybe all the big wines were shut down young and an early drinker showed better in a blind tasting?

I think there are so many great values in $15-40 Bordeaux out there. Reignac is maybe one of them, but not one of the strongest examples of it.

I used to buy their Prestige bottling a long time ago, back in the mid 90s-00. It was a critic’s darling back then, as an example of winemaking, care, quality superceding terroir and status. The importer Jeffrey Davies was a champion of it, so if one likes his portfolio, it fit in well. I thought the wines were made in a way that they presented well young, but had lots of creamy oak that some felt was never absorbed. Still I liked them well enough. The bottle shape for the ‘Prestige’ bottling, which was the one people wanted, was particularly annoying IIRC.

I’m not sure what ever happened to them as I have not seen/tasted any of the wines in a decade plus, but it was always going to be a hard slog selling a quality wine under Bordeaux AOC only, at the $30 price point, when most consumers would mentally slot that into the $10ish zone. I was actually just thinking about them the other day, when reading in an older Stephen Brook book about them, which triggered some ‘where are they now’ thoughts.

Roc de Cambes has been able to pull the general business strategem off (albeit in the Cotes du Bourg) by presenting the wine alongside Tertre Rotebouef, so people consider it more like a baby St Emilion rather than an amped up satellite.

I bought a few bottles of this in the early days and had one alongside a Pontet Canet 2001 earlier this year.
I asked my wife to pour them blind in order to figure out which is which.

It was a close call, but one of them had slightly more complex flavours, so I figured correctly the Pontet.
the differences grew over time.

Interestingly, not much tertiary complexity in both wines (from a cold cellar), so no hurry for the Pontet and not much to expect from further aging the Reignac.
In short: no need to seek out the 2001 Reignac; like Chris said, there are many other great values in that price range.

I agree on there is no need to seek out the 2001 now. I had a case or two on release and we drank through those in short order. It was that good on release, but it didn’t promise to improve over time.

I would expect it still be a decent wine but only to have toned down a bit without picking up much complexity.

At the price point at release, < $15 it was amazing.

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Decant everyday drinker but nothing off the charts. For the 01 the last 5 cellar tracker notes were positive.

I had the 2000, 2001, and 2005 blind about two years ago and while they were nice, no one was guessing that they were First Growths or even Super Seconds.

Would hope not! [cheers.gif]

I am watching the video and no one mentioned Wilfred Van Gorp and Kevin Shin yet who were in the tasting.

Thanks for posting this. Very interesting. Petrus not showing well on this day!

If one is looking for current release Bordeaux that are in the same style/price as what Reignac Prestige would have been 20 years ago, consider some of the Janoueix wines, or smaller wines from Davies portfolio.

St Paul and Couer d’Argent are ones I’ve had recently that were pretty solid. And I’m sure Jeff Leve’s website has a ton more in that same vein.

I would observe that back when Reignac was getting some press / distribution it was very much NOT in the AFWE / typical WB wheelhouse.

I had the 2000 and 2001. Both drank well young but did not age very well indeed.

I have had only had the 2000. As others have noted, pretty decent early on (but not to be confused with high end bordeaux). My last bottle was summer 2020 – decidedly less good than earlier bottles. My note suggests it might be in a dumb phase as it got a bit better with some time in the glass. So I have one bottle left which I am curious to let sleep for a while.

I will say that based upon drinking it I have not been chasing other vintages. In contrast I have chased some vintages of Sociando Mallet and Cantemerle, both of which are around the same price but far superior in my limited experience.

That event is the only occasion at which I’ve ever heard of anyone being impressed by Reignac.

There’s so much cheap and good Bordeaux out there.

Gloria, Capbern, Siran, Lillian Ladouys, Cantemerle, Lanessan are all <$50

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I quite enjoyed the early vintages but never understood the fuss. Then the price rose a bit and the wines became steadily richer so I gave up.

The fuss was that the wines came from an area with no historical record of being a good terroir/climat.

All the other high QPR names mentioned upthread at least had good addresses.

Yes, absolutely - what I meant was that it tasted like a good wine but not a great one. There had actually been an earlier tasting featuring I think the 96 which had got me interested a few years earlier. I bought quite a lot before realising I think after the 08 that it wasn’t my sort of wine after all!

2003 was nice when it was young. Far away being great but nice acidity. Rather modern fruit driven Cotarella style. Won’t buy again.
Better values available these days.