At historic Château de la Rivière, high above the Dordogne river in Fronsac on Bordeaux’s Right Bank, I found this lip-smacking, violet- and berry-scented red. The 2010 Les Sources du Château de la Rivière, a succulent, silky-textured Merlot blend from a great vintage, is gulpably fruity right now. It's the chateau's second wine, and it spent no time aging in oak barrels.

Fronsac remains a little-known and underrated appellation despite the growing number of ambitious estates making serious wines in the past decade. One I visited recently is this fairytale stone chateau. Beautiful and imposing, with several stone towers and a grand wide terrace overlooking vineyards sloping to the river, it's the largest estate in the appellation, with 58 hectares of vines.

There's plenty of illustrious history here. Charlemagne had a fortress on the spot, the L'Isle family, feudal lords for five centuries, built the château in 1553 and shipped their wine to England and Ireland. Down a treelined dirt road is an entrance to the estate's huge, amazing network of underground limestone caves, perfect for storing and aging bottles and barrels of wine. The many springs on the property gave this wine its name.

Engineer James Gregoire, who owns a vineyard and winery equipment company, first saw the chateau as a young man and vowed to buy it one day. In 2003, he did.

Today, it's hard to imagine that wines from Fronsac were once more famous than those from nearby Saint-Emilion or Pomerol, and sold for higher prices. Fronsac never recovered its reputation after phylloxera destroyed its vines, which means its wines are usually bargains.

The juicy, drink-me-now Les Sources certainly is.

Zester Daily contributor Elin McCoy is a wine and spirits columnist and author of "The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste."

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