Noob question on value Bordeaux

2005 Chateau Caronne Ste. Gemme Haut Medoc
Anyone tried this or care to comment?
I'm a novice wine enthusiast and have just started exploring French wines. Lately I've have tried a bunch of cheap...no...value Bordeaux.
The Caronne Ste. Gemme is $14 at Costco, and seems to be heads above the other 05 value wines. Thinking about a couple cases...
Its still young but opens nicely- in my humble, amateur & naive opinion it has some real potential, relating it to the better French wines I've tried in this style:
2003 Chateau Bernadotte Haut-Medoc
2005 Chateau de La Dauphine Fronsac
Thx for your help,
Mike-

[Jenise]

Mark, your "noob" palate isn't lying to you. David Bueker and Covert Harris, who have great palates for Bordeaux, both loved this wine. Here's David's TN:

http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14505&p=121310&hilit=Caronne#p121310

Go buy a trunkfull before they run out.

I agree it's a good value. From January:
2005 Ch. Caronne Ste Gemme (Haut-Medoc). Quite ripe cassis fruit, but good acidity and a solid base of (fine) tannins. Some blackberry cobbler, kirsch with time. A bit sweeter than my ideal, but tasty and the tannic/acidic structure makes this a candidate for short term aging. B+/B
revisited leftovers 2 days later: Caronne Ste Gemme- showing well, clearly ripe modern style, but holding up

Jenise- Thx for the reply. Sorry I missed the earlier posts on this. I did run a search but didn't get these in the results, my criteria must have been off. Going forward I'll try simpler queries first and build from there.

[Jenise]

Mike, I knew there had been recent good posts on the wine and so didn't try anything more complicated than just 'Caronne' in the search engine (using the one in the right hand corner, not the one above that searches this thread only). I didn't read through them all, just grabbed the most recent which is why I didn't mention Dale's recco. Now there's another guy whose opinion on Bordeaux you can take to the bank.

Mike: I really enjoyed the 2003 version of this, which did have dryer and firmer tannins and was more austere (austerity is not a bad thing to me!)

Hi Mike,

I haven't tried the Carrone Ste. Gemme but I do know the Chateau de La Dauphine as it was the first Chateau that 'turned me on' to wine in the first place, so I have always had a soft spot for it (plus quite a few bottles going back to '89 in my cellar). There will be a difference between these two wines as the Carrone is Cabernet S based whereas the Dauphine is mainly Merlot.

My experience with the Dauphine is that they can be quite big and fruity in their youth and then they have to go to sleep for quite a while before they wake up again (4-5 years).

I love aging wine, especially Bdx's because I enjoy the character that develops that can never really be imitated in a young wine. I have also discovered that not all wines age well and not all wines are worth aging, but you can get surprising results with wines that most people would not consider keeping for a 'long' time. Try to keep a couple of bottles tucked away for a few years and see what happens.

Simon