Chateau Chasse-Spleen sits at the very top of the unclassified Mdoc tier a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel that consistently overdelivers against classed growths. The Merlaut/Villars family has owned this Moulis estate for decades (today run by Celine Villars-Foubet), and the curious name traces back to Baudelaire and Lord Byron’s notion of ‘le spleen,’ the melancholy this wine was supposedly built to chase away. 2018 was a benchmark Mdoc vintage a warm, generous year that produced wines of depth and polish. This is classical Left Bank claret: Cabernet-led, structured, and built to age, but already drinking with real charm.