Château Clerc Milon

Clerc Milon dances where its neighbors march — fittingly for a label that carries a jeweled automaton of two dancers from the Mouton Rothschild museum. Baron Philippe de Rothschild bought the run-down fifth growth in 1970, and five decades of Mouton's farming and winemaking have restored its forty-one hectares between Mouton and Lafite to form. The terroir shows in the glass: this is northern Pauillac of exuberance rather than austerity, Cabernet-led but spiced, fleshy, and early to charm, with old parcels that include a curiosity of ancient Carmenère. Among the classified Pauillacs in the Rothschild constellation it is the extrovert — and it remains one of the appellation's most reliable buys below first-growth money.