Chateau Dubois Claverie 2019.

This was a gift from a friend for services rendered – a footling service so a generous gift. It won the Gold Medal at the Concours Mondiale des Feminalise in 2020. I have no idea what that means – made by a woman? Judged by a female panel? Or just another pretty sticky label to put on a bottle? (Marchbanks, you filthy cynic…)

It’s OK. It’s perfectly drinkable, it doesn’t make me grimace as it goes down – but twenty seconds later I don’t remember it either. It does some kind of a job, in other words. Not really worth remarking on, but I did promise to write up every bottle that I drank. As I have nothing more to say about it, I’ll mention the Marchbanks 5-point Wine Scale to fill up some space. It’s pretty simple, it’s rather like the 100-point system that most of the famous critics have adopted for some unfathomable reason (I’m being disingenuous of course, the reason is perfectly obvious – commerce) but discarding the 80-odd points that they never use and a few more besides. So what we are left with is

1 – which means “Jesus Christ!!” (in a bad way)
2 – “bof…” (imagine a Gallic shrug)
3 – good
4 – great
5 – “Jesus Christ!!” (in a good way)

The Chateau Dubois Claverie thus earns a solid 2. If you should ever feel the need to convert from my scale to the 100-point version (although I can’t imagine why you would) all you need to do is multiply by four and add 80.