A Fine Disregard for the Rules: Introducing the Château Méaume Rugby Legends Edition

Some of the best things in life happen unexpectedly. A chance invitation. An enthusiastic yes. And before you know it, two of England rugby's most celebrated players are sitting in front of your vines, microphones in hand, making themselves entirely at home.

That is exactly how the Château Méaume Rugby Legends Edition was born.

It began when we reached out to Ben Youngs (England Rugby’s most capped player) and Dan Cole (England Rugby’s second most capped player) who host the brilliant podcast “For the Love of Rugby” and invited them to visit the estate while they were in Bordeaux to watch the Bordeaux vs Toulouse European Cup semi-final. To our enormous surprise and considerable delight, they said yes. What followed was a day that perfectly encapsulated everything we love about Château Méaume — great wine, great company, and conversations that went on considerably longer than anyone had planned.

Ben and Dan recorded an episode of their podcast right here amongst the vines and very kindly invited us to join them. They then toured the vineyard, sat down to dinner in the chateau kitchen, and proceeded to demonstrate that England rugby players approach a good Bordeaux wine with exactly the same commitment, passion and enthusiasm they brought to every game they played for their country. The stories that emerged over the course of the evening were, let us say, considerably more candid than anything that ever appeared in a match programme.

Ben Youngs and Dan Cole both started their international careers in 2010 and between them accumulated 245 England caps, a quite extraordinary combined achievement that represents decades of dedication, sacrifice and service to English rugby at the very highest level. I wanted to find a way to celebrate their amazing contribution to rugby.

We have therefore created a limited-edition Rugby Legends Edition label.

But to understand the full story, you have to go back considerably further than a visit to a Bordeaux vineyard. My love of rugby began at Rugby School itself, where I was a pupil, as was my father before me, and his father before him. Three generations of our family have walked the same corridors, played on the same fields, and absorbed the same extraordinary heritage of a school that did not simply produce great rugby players, it invented the game entirely.

It was at Rugby School in 1823 that William Webb Ellis, in an act of magnificent spontaneity, picked up the ball during a football match and “with a fine disregard for the rules” ran with it. Rugby football was born in that moment, and the world has never quite been the same since (as a small historical footnote, the same year Webb Ellis was establishing the foundations of Rugby, wine from Château Méaume was imported into the UK for the first time).

Which all makes the label on this bottle rather more than a design choice. The rugby player you see depicted is in fact a 1st XV player from Rugby School itself, wearing the traditional school kit with his XV colours worn proudly on his chest, that has been worn on the worlds oldest rugby fields for generations. The reason England play in white is directly traceable to Rugby School.

That heritage is woven into every element of this label and it is no coincidence, then, that when we sat down to create a wine worthy of rugby's greatest values, we returned to our finest expression of all of these things, the Château Méaume 2019 Réserve du Château. Made from our oldest vines, aged in French oak, and built on nearly fifty years of family dedication to this single piece of Bordeaux terroir, it is a wine that embodies everything rugby teaches you to respect; character over showmanship, patience over shortcuts, and the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you have done the work properly.

Château Méaume Rugby Legends Edition. Réserve du Château. 2019 Vintage

Available exclusively from shop.chateaumeaume.com