Bordeaux 2013: Chateau Malescasse will not make a 2013 wine

Chateau Malescasse, the 110-hectare Cru Bourgeois estate, has said it will not make a wine from the 2013 vintage due to poor quality.

Malescasse cellar master and technical director, Bertrand Chemin, confirmed to decanter.com that the quality levels fot the 2013 wines were ‘not up to the expectations that we have set ourselves’.

Chemin said neither Chateau Malescasse nor the estate’s second wine, La Closerie de Malescasse, will be produced, and that the entire crop (usually 130,000 bottles) will be sold off for a generic AOC Haut-Médoc wine.

The Lamarque Médoc-based estate (pictured) was sold in October 2012 by Alcatel Alsthom to Philippe Austruy, a business man with a background in retirement homes and health clinics, and owner of La Commanderie de Peyrasson in Provence.

Austruy announced his intention to move the quality of the wine upwards, and used only 50% of the crop for his 2012 vintage. This year, he has made the decision to produce nothing rather than compromise the quality he is looking for, said Chemin.

Consultant Stéphane Derenoncourt, who has worked with the estate since the Austruy purchase, told Le Figaro newspaper that, ‘it was a difficult decision, but necessary.’

Another Derenoncourt-consulted range of branded wines called Les Parcelles de Stéphane Derenoncourt from négociant Maison Bouey will also not produce a 2013 vintage.

Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux