Grange Clinet is priced less than what it's worth; part of that has to due with its vineyards falling north of the Garonne River, where wines such as Sauternes are better known and therefore priced accordingly. However, the slight to this red becomes your advantage, because Grange Clinet is simply marvelous. When you taste a wine that so completely over-delivers for the price, you just don't forget it.

We first tasted Grange Clinet ten years ago. It's a blend of 60% Merlot, 28%, Cabernet Sauvignon, and 12% Cabernet Franc that, in bad vintages, offers beautiful, bright red cherries and currants with notes of tobacco, herbs, and oak (that was last year). In great vintages, like '05, it offers a memory that will last another ten years.