Château Moya

Côtes de Castillon took its name from Castillon-la-Bataille, the fight that ended the Hundred Years’ War in 1453. The English left. The limestone and clay stayed. Today the appellation sits against Saint-Émilion and, on the best slopes, makes red Bordeaux that no longer has to apologize for not being across the boundary stone.

Château Moya is estate-grown and organic. The maison is plain about what it is not: this is not bulk wine. Every bottle is mis en bouteille au château. The same Genodics practice used at Auguste — music at dawn and dusk — is used here, for plumper fruit and vines that hold up better against fungus.

The 2016 in the U.S. cellar is the vintage on the label: gold foil, a white label, “made with organic grapes,” product of France. It is the bottle the maison uses when it wants to prove that organic, on the Right Bank, can be a pleasure and not a lecture.

Castillon rewards people who learn one slope instead of a classification. Moya is that slope for this collection — fashionable in the last decade for a reason you can taste: sun, a little altitude relative to the plain, and fruit picked by a house that also makes Pomerol and Saint-Émilion Grand Cru.