Second Label Wines from Top Bordeaux Chateaux

Explore your passion with some of the wine industry’s best kept secrets, and experience the best the world has to offer at great value.

Accessible & Value-Driven Fine Wine from Bordeaux

In Bordeaux, many chateaux sell one or two different cuvees aside from their top wine. Second label wines generally come from younger vines of the same vineyard than the estate’s premier cuvee. However, the same technical teams produce the wine, importing centuries of individual estate techniques and winemaking philosophies.
These second wines are usually enjoyable younger than their top label counterparts, and typically the pricing is more approachable.
Jane Anson (Decanter) states; "Style and accessibility is quite rightly the biggest draw (for Bordeaux Second Wines). The first wines of the top chateaux are often highly tannic when young, and need a good 10 or 15 years before softening enough to show their full complexity."
Although these wines may not have the same cellaring potential as their more prestigious estate counterparts, they are fantastic wines that perhaps show the character of the chateaux better in their younger states.

1. Left and Right Bank

Prominent Left Bank producers almost always bottle a second, and sometimes third wine. This is not the case of the Right Bank, specifically Pomerol where second wines are more the exception than the rule. This is largely due to Right Bank estates often having drastically smaller real estate than their Left Bank counterparts.
2. Chateau Margaux

Chateau Margaux was the first major Bordeaux producer to occasionally produce a “2eme vin”. First reports of a second wine from the Chateau date back to the beginning of the Bordeaux wine trade in the 17^th century. In 1906, Chateau Margaux released the inaugural vintage of Pavillon Rouge, the first major producer to release an official second wine.