Winemaker Notes
Ever since it was first produced, and down through the various vintages, Château Beychevelle has reflected the elegance and finesse of Saint Julien's finest terroirs. Graceful and complex, with a tremendous aromatic richness, Château Beychevelle is made from the best plots in the vineyard and undergoes a rigorous selection process .It reveals its character after about ten years, and can be kept for several decades, depending on the vintage.
Blend: 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, 6% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Beychevelle is fabulous. As always, Beychevelle includes quite a bit more Merlot than most wines in the appellation, but the Cabernet is especially high here. Inky dark fruit, crème de cassis, mocha, licorice and lavender build in the glass. This juicy, extroverted Saint-Julien has a ton to offer. The combination of fruit intensity, acid and supporting structure is superb. The 2023 is showy, but not at all overdone. Beychevelle remains one of the most distinctive wines in all of Bordeaux. It is especially classy in this edition. Tasted two times.–Neal Martin
Barrel Sample: 94-96 -
Jeb Dunnuck
A brilliant wine that makes the most of the vintage, the 2023 Château Beychevelle sports sensational aromatics of cassis and lively berries intermixed with sappy tobacco, spring flowers, graphite, and a wonderful sense of minerality. It's medium to full-bodied and silky on the palate, with ripe, polished tannins, perfectly integrated acidity, and a gorgeous finish. The balance, purity, and just overall harmony here are top-notch, and while I like it even today, it will cruise for 25 years in a cold cellar. This is a legit fabulous 2023 that deserves a place in the cellar.
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James Suckling
A deep, youthful nose of ripe black cherries, mulberries, graphite and a touch of violets. Fine-boned and structured, showing more poise and elegance than sheer power and density. A precise, medium- to full-bodied wine with good acidity and a long finish.
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Decanter
Fragrant and floral note, fully expressive aromatically with strawberries and red cherries, you can definitely smell the Petit Verdot on the nose - intense. Clean and clear, a lovely weight in the mouth. Smooth but grippy too, tannins are svelte and super fine, this has nice ripe fruit, good body and mouthfeel and a long finish. Juicy, almost fleshy, this has some weight in the mouth. I like the depth, this has some chew, a soft hint of sweetness plus creamy chalkiness plus a lovely lift on the finish. Cool and crisp but well managed. Really excellent and very accessible, juicy and elegant. Highest ever proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend. 6% press wine. Yields around 50hl/ha. 50% grand vin production. Ageing 18 months, 70% new oak. 1/3 aged in one year barrels.
Barrel Sample: 94 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Beychevelle has turned out especially well this year, exhibiting a more integrated, seductive style than recent vintages that were constructed in a punchier, more extracted register. Offering up aromas of cassis and plums mingled with notions of pen ink, violets and pencil shavings, it's medium to full-bodied, broad and fleshy, with a deep core of fruit and a classy, suave profile that foregrounds the estate's prime vineyard holdings on the plateau around Ducru-Beaucaillou. It's a blend of 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot that represents 50% of the estate's production.
Barrel Sample: 93-94 -
Wine Spectator
This is lovely, with gently crushed blueberry, açaí and blackberry fruit flavors that are fresh and delineated, carried by a subtle graphite note and gilded with violet and anise through the sleek, focused finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Over the years, my experiences with Château Beychevelle have been uneven, as the wines have often leaned a bit too rustic for my taste. The 2023 vintage, while still showing a hint of that wild side, is quite successful and represents the Saint-Julien AOC with clarity and confidence. This wine delivers earthy, rustic character accented by attractive spices, yet remains smooth and layered through a lingering, satisfying finish. Pair it with gochujang-glazed grilled short ribs (LA-style galbi), where the sweet-savory heat, garlic, and char play beautifully against the wine’s spice and structure. (Tasted: January 22, 2026, San Francisco, CA)
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.
An icon of balance and tradition, St. Julien boasts the highest proportion of classed growths in the Médoc. What it lacks in any first growths, it makes up in the rest: five amazing second growth chateaux, two superb third growths and four well-reputed fourth growths. While the actual class rankings set in 1855 (first, second, and so on the fifth) today do not necessarily indicate a score of quality, the classification system is important to understand in the context of Bordeaux history. Today rivalry among the classed chateaux only serves to elevate the appellation overall.
One of its best historically, the estate of Leoville, was the largest in the Médoc in the 18th century, before it was divided into the three second growths known today as Chateau Léoville-Las-Cases, Léoville-Poyferré and Léoville-Barton. Located in the north section, these are stone’s throw from Chateau Latour in Pauillac and share much in common with that well-esteemed estate.
The relatively homogeneous gravelly and rocky top soil on top of clay-limestone subsoil is broken only by a narrow strip of bank on either side of the “jalle,” or stream, that bisects the zone and flows into the Gironde.
St. Julien wines are for those wanting subtlety, balance and consistency in their Bordeaux. Rewarding and persistent, the best among these Bordeaux Blends are full of blueberry, blackberry, cassis, plum, tobacco and licorice. They are intense and complex and finish with fine, velvety tannins.