Château L’Évangile: Tasting & Drinking
In my introduction to this profile I indicated that the wine of Château L’Évangile had a rather stern character, and I suggested in a sweeping generalisation that this was a feature that had perhaps endeared it with the British wine trade in particular. Such throwaway comments are of course intended to be snorted and scoffed at; there isn’t really any one particular style that appeals to the British palate, just as the American palate likewise has no real national rule to follow. Such talk is little more than jingoistic.
Nevertheless, although we should not generalise about national palate preferences, we can certainly generalise about the wines of an estate such as Château L’Évangile. And it is certainly true that the wine seems to major on structure and poise, perhaps without some of the more flattering textures seen the wines of some of its neighbours; this comparison includes both those in Pomerol and those just across the border in St Emilion, which share the same terroir and which should be considered alongside their Pomerol counterparts. Writing in Bordeaux (Faber and Faber, second edition, 1991), David Peppercorn describes the wines as having “exceptional colour and a rather massive, chewy texture” the clear implication being that the wines perhaps lack the elegance that he might expect from a neighbour of Vieux Château Certan or Château Cheval Blanc.
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