2016 Chateau Bernateau St. Emilion Grand Cru France 750 ml

The rich and exuberant 2016 Château Bernateau Saint-Émilion Grand Cru comes from exceptional terroir.

But what really sets it apart is the meticulous farming and quality-obsessed winemaking involved in making it—much of the same attention and care that goes into $300 bottles from the Right Bank.

Add this wine’s powerful structure and sophistication, plus a vintage that Vinous said produced “remarkably polished and sensual” bottles, and its under-$40 price gets more and more unbelievable—especially when other 94-point 2016 Bordeaux standouts can go for multiples of that.

Winemaker Pierrick Lavau’s scrupulous methods are what make Château Bernateau one of St.-Émilion’s truly exemplary small producers—and you rarely see techniques like his in a wine at this price because they’re a serious investment of time and money. His intensive, hands-on approach is embodied by his fermenters: custom-made combinations of oak and stainless steel with plexiglass windows so he can continuously monitor progress.

The whole winery is cutting edge, like their optical sorting machine, which measures every single grape by size, color, and shape. And if that weren’t enough, Lavau sorts them again by hand, then ages the wine in a large percentage of new French oak—practices that typically result in much pricier bottles.

That keen attention to detail translates to a rich and polished 2016. It’s aromatically intricate, weaving black-fruit aromas with tones of bay leaf, mint, and cigar tobacco. We gave it a 45-minute decant, which revealed the wine’s powerful structure and dark-fruited core accented by notes of leather, raw chocolate, and herbs. It’s exceptional right now, and we can’t wait to see what it becomes over the next several years.