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THE MONSTERS FROM MONTROSE

BRUCE PALLING | UNCORKED | November 19th 2007

Bruce encounters an uncompromising giant of a wine so unstoppable that it might usefully have been deployed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. One to be enjoyed a decade hence, and kept in a dark place until then ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Families, like wine vintages, do turn up some odd results. Take the Dukes of Montrose. Off to a flying start with the first non-royal dukedom in Scotland way back in the 15th century, the Earl of Crawford managed to forfeit the dukedom, and then have it briefly restored, but only for his lifetime. The next family to take the Montrose title wasn't much luckier. The first Marquess supported Charles I during the Civil War, but got into a nasty squabble with the Campbells, was betrayed by Charles II and ended up being hanged in 1650. It wasn't a pretty sight--his head was put on a spike in Edinburgh while his limbs were distributed around Scotland pour encourager les autres.

However, everything was soon patched up, including the dismembered corpse. After a few more good deeds in the early 18th century, the title was elevated to a dukedom, and there the family has remained in fairly deep obscurity ever since.

The only Duke of Montrose I ever came across lived in Rhodesia, where I spent a trying year as a foreign correspondent in the 1970s. His Grace didn't use that title, preferring to be known as Lord Graham. He was a renegade too, having attended a Nuremberg rally in Hitler's Germany and taken a passionate interest in phrenology, perhaps the most laughable pseudo-science of the 19th century. That's the one where you divine all about a person's character by the bumps on his head. The Duke was one of the stalwart racists of the white minority regime in Southern Rhodesia, a country described quite accurately at the time as "Surrey with a lunatic fringe on top". His act of rebellion was to sign the original Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, which technically made him a traitor to the Crown. You would think the family might have learnt a lesson, having provided the first peer to be hanged four centuries earlier, but some people never learn.

So what about the august Bordeaux chateau of the same name? I have been searching the
archives for news of a seafaring Duke of Montrose who just happened
to sail up the Gironde estuary and seize some promising vineyard in
Aquitaine on behalf of himself or the Crown. In fact, I have to
confess there is absolutely no connection whatsoever between these
two most famous possessors of the Montrose brand, but in the
circumstances, it is just as well. In the case of Chateau Montrose, thename is rather mundanely derived from the French for "pink hill" (mont rose).

Montrose is an impressively robust wine from St Estèphe, the northernmost region of Bordeaux right up by the Gironde estuary. It is renowned for tannic behemoths, akin to drinking strong cold tea until they reach the age of consent--which can take two or three decades. In wine-talk, this means it is "four square", or more simplistically, "the Latour of St Estèphe".

Although it is relatively young in Bordeaux terms--it only came into existence in the early 19th century--Montrose can match and occasionally overtake its chief rival, Cos d'Estournel, as the wine of the appellation.

Personally, I usually prefer Cos, with its larger dose of Merlot and its more elegant style, but occasionally, in vintages such as 1990, 1970 and 1955, I have had to admit that Montrose has the power and structure to make it the superior offering.

In more recent times Montrose has gained considerable favour with Robert Parker. The 1990 vintage gained his coveted 100 points, the first St Estèphe to have done so (followed be the '03, which has recently been elevated to this score). Last year Montrose was purchased by the Bouygues brothers, who own a huge construction firm of the same name. However, like something out of Balzac, there is an ongoing family dispute, with the daughter of the previous owner contesting the sale, so it is still in the hands of the courts. The Bouygues are not vandals--they have appointed Jean Delmas to be the new wine-maker, who previously looked after the illustrious Chateau Haut Brion. Montrose also boasts the only heli-pad at a Bordeaux vineyard, but I am unsure whether or not this was a recent addition for the new owners.

Roberson Wines, a rather modernist establishment in High St Kensington which counts Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal among its clients, had a vertical tasting of Montrose recently, which I was happy to attend. There were 15 of us around two large tables surrounded by racks holding hundreds of obscure and grand wines. We went back as far as 1988, a vintage rubbished by Parker as lacking richness, and probably too tannic (83 points, which is like saying "drink this at your peril"). Perversely, this was one of my favourite wines of the night--austere and lean, but beautifully balanced; what I would call an intellectual wine rather than a friendly extrovert.

After that, we were supposed to be wowed by the Dame de Montrose '90, the second wine of the famous blockbuster. I tasted the actual '90 Montrose twice last year in the company of a charming but naughty Indonesian financier, who now sails under a Singaporean flag after fleeing from his homeland in the wake of the collapse of the Suharto regime. The first bottle was an awesome display of power and length--not quite ready, but hell, who cares when it is as impressive as this? The second bottle was ever so slightly more one-dimensional and more focussed in a detrimental sort of way. Only later did some of my wine broker friends tell me that '90 Montrose can be slightly inconsistent for whatever reason--as if they had designated more first wine than was absolutely prudent.

Anyway, what about the Dame? Well, this was not my cup of Lapsang Souchong: harsh tannins, a bit hollow in the centre and I doubt if it will ever fulfil its promise, though most of the other tasters disagreed with me.

So on to the '95 and '96. These were quite typical of the vintages as a whole, with the '95 having gorgeous oodles of fruit with tingles of tannin that suggest it won't be fully ready until the next decade. The '96 vintage, by contrast, is more restrained and subtle, with, I suspect, an even longer life. Like all great Bordeaux, it has the ability to shimmer away at the end like a mirage, leaving you subliminally grasping to try to encompass all the flavours. Shorn of the complexities, the '95 would be ideal for a first date, while the '96 would be best on the anniversary.

The '99 was pretty ordinary--obvious cassis flavours and a slight finish with loads of teabag tannins. The charming lady talking us through the wines said rather optimistically that it said to her, "Here I am, but I haven't grown up yet". It was a pretty bad vintage so I can't see the point of dropping in to see how it manages in the future. This was paired with the '01, which, though often a seriously underestimated vintage, was rather clunky and inky and no fun at all. It did have real style and a mid-palate that suggested a happy ending, but don't touch for at least five years or more.

The next two wines were the Dame '00, and the Montrose '00, which is very highly rated by everyone. The Dame '00 was considerably better than the '90--yes, there were those persistent tannins but they were almost pushed aside by the power of the fruit. It showed more on the nose than its big brother but was still quite stalky and in need of more time.

The Montrose '00 was seriously impressive, showing signs of its ultimate class with a lovely austere slatey taste.

The final wines were the Dame '03 and the Montrose '03, recently elevated to 100 points by Parker. The Dame was a delight--surprisingly complete and a dense toffee-like middle. This was far easier to taste than the actual first wine, which was an uncompromising giant. The way it just kept pumping out its power reminded me of what it must have been like to be subjected to the waves of attack at Omaha Beach on D Day--unstoppable. There is a chocolatey ending, but this is not a wine to be enjoyed for another decade.

I left the tasting in two minds. These are impressively constructed wines with a slightly growing gesture to modernity in the post '95 vintages, but oh so tough to the taste. Overall, I would definitely recommend the '88 for immediate pleasure, but despite its shocking Parker score, it is still around £50 a bottle, which is quite a lot. The '96 is the one I would lay down for the future, and the '03 Dame would tempt me too. As for the '00 and '03, they are priced at around £100 to £180 a bottle and for that much, you can pick up some amazing wines that would be far more pleasurable for me at least. So yes, a qualified success, but still in the classic frame of a heavy hitter with more solidity than subtlety.