Château Gaby

Château Gaby sits on the Right Bank, in the Canon-Fronsac appellation, where the hills break toward the river and the soils are clay over limestone. Wine has been made on this ground since the 1660s. The estate the maison works today is about forty acres — small enough that a vintage still tastes like a place, not a brand architecture.

Tom Sullivan’s Canon-Fronsac became the calling card of Vignobles Sullivan: a grand vin with the horses-and-vine label, a Princess cuvée from the younger vines, and a signed Cuvée that Le Grand Classement has put at the very top of Bordeaux. The 2014 wears 94 points from Forbes. The Cuvée graphic the maison publishes cites 95 from Forbes, a No. 1 and a No. 7 in the Grand Classement.

Decanter called the house style a blockbuster Fronsac — opaque, oak-sweet on the nose, then precise. In the glass the grand vin runs Merlot with Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, roughly eighty, ten, and ten. Florals, red and black fruit, sandalwood, a tannic line that keeps the sweetness honest. Bottled at the château. Not a negociant blend with a château name on the capsule.

American audiences met the bottle before they met the appellation. The shop’s own stills place Château Gaby and Princess Gaby in Billions, Elsbeth, and You. The wine did the traveling. The estate stayed in Canon-Fronsac.