Ao Yun 敖云2013 versus Malescot St Exupery Margaux 2005

Ao Yun 敖云2013 versus Malescot St Exupery Margaux 2005

I have reported Malescot St Exupery 2005 in the past here
Ao Yun has been gathering a lot of attention lately, this wine is produced in the foothills of the Himalayas, near legendary city of Shangri la in Yunnan province of China. The property belonged to Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH). The CEO managing this project is Jean Guillaume Prats, who used to run Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux. I chose this Malescot St Exupery to have a showdown against Ao Yun 2013 which is the first vintage being produced has myriad reasons; First, 2005 is a superb Bordeaux vintage and perhaps it’s a good showdown; Next, a Margaux wine is usually softer and more mellow, not as harsh as a Pauillac perhaps not so ready at 16 years old. Lastly, Malescot’s composition is 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot, while Ao Yun is composed of mainly Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc (composition was not revealed by LVMH). Perhaps a fairer showdown would be Sassicaia with the same composition of grape varietals, but I’ll leave it to future reviews. I decanted both wines for almost 4 hours (including dinner it would have been 6 hours), although I had a sip of both wines immediately upon decanting both bottles. Bouquet of Ao Yun has this elevated acidity with a bit of chemical oak funk, and the acidity was reflected in the content as well, however, a simple sip and there are a lot of promising elements inside, and already overtook Malescot by a shoulder as my preference. A couple hours later, I took another whiff, and I was impressed, very mellow fruit and slightly elevated oak profile. A sip and I was sold, I was really impressed with the content, the fruit is very expressive, soft and elegant, more importantly, drinking right next to Malescot, it stood tall, not giving in a bit in terms of overall performance, I really enjoyed the finesse of the wine body, and this is not common for Bordeaux, in fact, Malescot was bold and too rich when compared to Ao Yun. I must confess I never had a bottle of Chinese made wines this impressive until tonight. Perhaps hundreds of years down the road, wines made in China is as common as silk made in China. 敖云带着一丝丝的中国本土风味，非常秀气和优雅，有一种傲视天下，非常独特。