Sable Upon Sable
TASTING NOTES: “A historic name reborn, the 2019 “Les Sables Noir” (The Black Sands) revives the 19th-century legacy of Château Romefort, sourced from 18 hectares of original vineyard land in Cussac-Fort-Médoc. This Cru Bourgeois delivers classic Left Bank depth: spiced plum, black cherry, licorice, vanilla, walnut, and a hint of raw mushroom. Full-bodied and firmly textured, it layers plush dark fruit over fine-grained tannins, finishing long and chalky with true Médoc restraint. A modern return to form with unmistakable heritage. This cuvée, “Les Sables Noirs” represents a parcel selection from a contiguous block of 5.45 hectares (Cadastral Parcels No. 19 through 25). The vineyard features dark sandy-gravel top soils resting over a clay-gravel subbase. The sand promotes early spring warming and excellent surface drainage, while the clay foundation ensures steady moisture retention during dry summer periods, yielding a supple, finely structured Médoc wine with generous fruit expression.” (AbV 13%)
VARIETALS: 70% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon
BARRELS: 12 to 14 months in traditional French oak barrels (approx. 20%–30% new oak)
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Sable, as in “Les Sables Noir,” the name of this wine, which the tasting note translates as “The Black Sands.”
French has two words spelled sable that have nothing to do with each other. The one on this label means sand, from Latin sabulum, which also gave English “sabulous,” a real word for sandy that I plan to use once at a dinner party and then retire. The other sable is the animal, a Siberian marten whose name traveled west through Slavic languages (Russian still says sobol’) along the fur trade routes. Its pelt was so prized, and so dark, that medieval heralds borrowed the animal’s name as their word for black. In heraldry, “sable” is just the color black, and that is the sense you’ll find on a coat of arms.
So a heraldry nerd squinting at this bottle could read it as “the black blacks” (go with it). Heraldry also has a famous rule of tincture: you can’t lay a color on a color, so a black charge on a black field is a violation. Sable on sable gets sent back to the drawing board. I’d like to think the heralds would make an exception for a wine that comes with its own coat of arms, the 19th-century château on the label, but they were a strict bunch.
