Winemaker Notes
Dark, ruby red in appearance, Château Beau-Site displays aromas of tobacco leaf, leather and blackcurrant on the nose. The palate is savory and herbal with an earthy minerality and hints of tobacco smoke.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Extremely enticing aromas of ripe plums and peaches with spices, such as nutmeg. Full-bodied, deep and firmly textured with beautiful fruit and a lovely, long and flavorful finish. Best since 1989. Try after 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Beau Site, owned by the Philippe Castèja family, is a blend of 16% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot, 78% Cabernet Sauvignon and 3% Cabernet Franc cropped at 50 hectoliters per hectare. Picking commenced on 6 October, relatively late for the appelation. The bouquet is a mixture of red and black fruit, a touch of spice box and black pepper emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with slightly hard tannin on the entry, firm in style, quite masculine with good fruit concentration to balance it out. It will need its barrel maturation to soften the edges here, but I appreciate the freshness and vitality. Although not the best known Saint Estèphe, I feel this will benefit from 5-6 years in the cellar.
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
Decanter
A graphite and pencil-lead St-Estephe from deep gravel soils. Austere dark fruits are balanced by good lift and plenty of tannins that will take their time to come round. Cabernet Franc makes up the blend.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.