Chateau Giscours 2016

Professional Ratings

• 96 James Suckling
  This has attractive, glossy, ripe red-plum and licorice aromas with cedar, flowers and red berries, as well as a stony edge. A very fragrant, cabernet-driven nose. The palate has elegance and grace with sleek and charming, balanced style and a discreet tannin structure that holds the finish long and fresh. A blend of 81 per cent cabernet sauvignon and 19 per cent merlot. Try from 2023.
• 96 Wine Enthusiast
  This nearly 200-acre estate lies in the south of the Margaux appellation. The wine is another great success in a series of superb years. It is rich but the structure and finely textured fruit give it style and longevity. Drink the wine from 2026.
  Cellar Selection
• 94 Decanter
  Concentrated autumnal fruit offers a hawthorny bramble of blackberry and bilberry. Big-framed, muscular tannins are joined by plenty of acidity - it's very clearly built to last and confident in its ability to reward those with patience. Matured in 50% new oak. Axel Marchal and Valerie Lavigne consult.
• 94 Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
  COMMENTARY: For decades, I have found Château Giscours to be a good but not top-notch Margaux. The 2016 vintage has changed my mind, and I now put this wine up with the best wines this appellation has to offer. TASTING NOTES: This wine shows classic Margaux character. Its aromas and flavors of black fruit, dust, and mineral should plate it well with a well-marbled grilled ribeye. (Tasted: January 25, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
• 93 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2016 Giscours gives up aromas of cassis, chocolate, earth, tar, pepper and hoisin with touches of flowers and a meaty nuance. The palate is medium to full-bodied, firm and grainy with a great core and a long finish.
• 93 Jeb Dunnuck
  The 2016 Château Giscours is fabulous stuff, offering a beautiful, complex (and classic Margaux) perfume of smoke tobacco, black currants, truffly earth, and spring flowers. Finesse-driven, medium-bodied, and seamless on the palate, it has ultra-fine tannins and no hard edges, and is already drinking beautifully. Nevertheless, it’s going to benefit from 3-4 years of bottle age and cruise for 20-25 years or more. The blend of the 2016 is 81% Cabernet Sauvignon and 19% Merlot and it’s well worth a case purchase.
• 93 Connoisseurs' Guide

  A standout in our small sampling of Margaux and a wine that leads with fairly voluminous, spellbinding aromas of cassis, juicy black cherries, a bit of new leather and discreet oak and follows with equally rich, marvelously refined flavors of superb length. Its tannins are soft yet provide the structure required for age, and, if guaranteed to repay protracted cellaring with increasing complexity, the 2016 Giscours is so beautifully composed and well-polished as to be thoroughly satisfying after only a few more years have passed.

• 92 Wine Spectator
  This is on the darker side of the ledger, with well-melded black currant, blackberry and black cherry fruit, infused with brambly energy and allied to a graphite spine on the anise-tinged finish. Features a light woodsy echo at the very end, but there's plenty of flesh here. Best from 2022 through 2032.