Château Kirwan is one of the oldest estates of Margaux, ranked a third growth in 1855. It takes its name from Mark Kirwan, an Irish wine merchant who married into the property in the eighteenth century.

The estate covers around 35 hectares on the gravel plateau of Cantenac, in the heart of the Margaux appellation, and has been owned by the Schröder & Schÿler family since 1925. A new gravity-fed cellar was completed in the 2010s, and the wines have gained in precision since.

The style follows the appellation: perfume before power — floral aromatics rather than weight.

2015 was Margaux’s vintage. A warm dry summer was interrupted by rain that fell unevenly across the Médoc — and Margaux, in the south, largely escaped it. The appellation produced the wines of the year, and Kirwan among the most complete it has made.

Blackcurrant and violet over cedar and a note of graphite; silky and finely drawn on the palate, the tannins polished, closing long and perfumed. Margaux doing what only Margaux does.