Wine tasting at Maison Galhaud, St Emilion

It’s been a couple of months since I posted something about wines from St Emilion. Come on, admit it, you always knew there would be more! When we visited St Emilion we kept ourselves plenty busy tasting a number of wines, so there are still plenty of tasting notes to come!

We love visiting a big old place with a nice cellar and Maison Galhaud is fantastic for that. Hewn into the living rock and deeply atmospheric, it really reeks of generations of proud French wine-making tradition. And damp, there is a slight smell of damp.

They have a beautiful tasting room with a massive variety of wine on offer, so we just took the opportunity to taste two – a Bordeaux of the house and also a Saint Emilion Grand Cru which is bottled at the chateaux.

Manoir Galhaud 2010
Bordeaux

This wine has a deep but fresh and rounded nose, bursting with deep notes of cherry and black fruit. It’s delicate colour has a slight halo of aging around the rim. The flavour continues the rounded theme, but it is quite punchy with heavy savoury flavours of black fruit but also an interesting element of apricot. Not a bad little find and very reasonably priced for the quality at 10 EUR per bottle on site.

Chateau la Rose Brisson 2012
Saint Emilion Grand Cru

Also made at Maison Galhaud. An attractive light garnet colour this has black cherry notes on the nose, and more of an ethanol punch in the mouth as well as being tannic and fruity. It has a slight astringency on the mouth, but a lighter body than the Manoir Galhaud Bordeaux, which you would expect from a St Emilion AOC. I tasted very slight vegetal hints and it stayed consistent throughout the tasting, with no real change on the afternose. At 20 EUR a bottle, it was a little more than I would have been prepared to say, but that is not to deny the quality for somebody whose palette this wine suited better.