Château la Tour de By: Classic claret for the dinner table

A tasting of Tour de By vintages stretching from 2000 to 2017 reveals a classic Bordeaux wine that can more than hold its own on the dinner table, despite not coming from one of the Médoc's star appellations.

Château la Tour de By is pretty much the epitome of classic claret. It’s even the Wolseley restaurant’s house Bordeaux, that bastion of old school London located in the heart of St James’s.

It doesn’t get much more reassuring than that for a cru bourgeois, and that’s even before you know that a generation of 15th century English soldiers were garrisoned on the site of today’s vineyards during the Hundred Years’ War.

All of this makes Tour de By a fine cru bourgeois with a good reputation. But let’s be honest, these are not wines that attract attention in a normal lineup of Bordeaux.

Not classified, not in a star appellation, not run by a big name director, and yet the backbone in many ways of the region. Good quality Médoc, priced at a level that most of us can afford without worrying about when we pull the cork.

And necessarily, this means that methods are less slick than at the more iconic names. They use the maximum yield allowed by the local wine syndicate in each vintage whenever possible, because the number of bottles matter at this level of price.

They machine harvest, and only introduced temperature controlled vats from the 2006 vintage onwards. Chaptalisation was a regular feature until 2009, although never in recent years (well okay, 2013).

This vertical goes from 2000 up to 2017, the year after Marc Pagès became sole owner of the property that he had shared with two other families since 1965.It’s located up in the northern stretches of the Médoc in Begadan, with views over the Garonne river from the vineyard, most beautifully apparent when you climb the tower of a former mill that dates back to 1825 and is located in the middle of the vines.

There are just 200m between the edge of the vineyard and the beginning of the Gironde Estuary at this point, and the Estuary itself is opening up as it nears the mouth of the ocean, stretching to 10km wide, making this almost an island wine, with clear oceanic influence.La Tour Carnet has its white vines not far from here, and you can understand why as you feel the breeze.

Today, Tour de By is run by Pagès’ grandsons, Frédéric Leclerc and Benjamin Richer des Forges, who are more than aware that a cru bourgeois should play to its strengths.

This means focusing on taming the Cabernet Sauvignon tannins that can tend towards rustic so far up the Médoc peninsula, without sacrificing the signatures of cassis, menthol and cedar that you are looking for when opening these bottles.

They also believe in maintaining another benefit of old school Bordeaux – an en primeur offer that makes sense for consumers. The 2016, for example, was around 10 euros per bottle on release and 30 euros now. In every vintage, they guarantee at least 40% difference in price between en primeur and the bottled price a few years later, something that you rarely hear these days

There are less superlatives in the tasting notes, and there are missteps also. Not every vintage hits it out of the park. And not every vintage is going to go the distance.

On the whole the sweet spot here is six to eight years. By 10 years the black fruits are clearly softening unless in a particularly good vintage like 2000, and no doubt 2010.

So get ready to reset your inner points scale. Celebrate the fact that, on the 100-point scale, late 80s and early 90s means recommended and highly recommended wines that don’t need to be cellared for a decade, and that offer brilliant drinking over a dining table.

Jane Anson’s reviews of Tour de By wines

You may also like:

Prieuré-Lichine vintages re-tasted: Why this estate is one to watch

The Bordeaux barometer: Cool versus hot vintages