Wine of the Week: Chateau Langlade Medoc

Grapes: Cabernet sauvignon (50 percent), merlot (50 percent)

Region: Bordeaux, France

Vintage: 2012

Price: $8.99

Availability: Trader Joe’s

In the glass: Chateau Langlade wine shows its youth with an intense purplish-dark-red color with an opaque core going out into a violet-pink rim definition with medium-high viscosity.

On the nose: It is still a young wine, which shows all the classic Bordeaux elements with superb concentration of crushed black currant fruit, creme de cassis, wild cherry compote and spice elements on the nose with underlying oak references, vanilla, creme caramel and fruit-driven minerals.

On the palate: This is modern Bordeaux with rich and mouth filling, almost chewy, wine with layers of black fruit, creme de cassis, boysenberry sorbet, vanilla, cedar, spice box and herbs going into a great midpalate that is nicely delineated and quite well-balanced. It also has a nice longish finish, punctuated by velvety tannins and yet more black fruit and vanilla, that lingers in the mouth for a full 30 seconds afterward.

Odds and ends: This is the first wine from the shifty 2012 vintage in Bordeaux that I have wanted to review. 2012 has some highlights, especially in Pomerol and Saint Emilion, which are known as the Right Bank. Although this wine is from the Left Bank, it is still simple enough that something drinkable and quite enjoyable came out of it, and then it is less than $9. Try it with a classic filet with potatoes and bearnaise sauce. Drink it through 2018.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.