Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou (Futures Pre-Sale) 2022
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
The bouquet seduces with an alluring perfume that layers delicate violets, opulent crème de cassis and blackberry coulis, and exotic star anise with crystalline definition. A full body of densely concentrated fruits and tightly woven, mouthcoating tannins gives a luxurious draping texture to the palate. The opulent flavors are lifted by an exquisite freshness and a saline mineral edge defines the very long, succulent finish. With its juxtaposition of concentrated richness and finessed elegance, the 2022 has timeless glamour with a modern twist.
Blend: 82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Moving to the Grand Vin, it's a slightly more Merlot-influenced blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and 18% Merlot, raised in new barrels. It brings the same level of concentration and structure as the La Croix but has another level of class, elegance, and purity, with sensational aromatics of crème de cassis, graphite, crushed stone, sandalwood, and graphite. The purity here is truly remarkable, and it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, perfectly integrated oak, silky tannins, and a great finish. This beauty hit 14% natural alcohol with a pH of 3.8 and an IPT of 95. Given its balance as well as its texture, it's going to offer pleasure with just short-term cellaring yet also evolve for decades.
Barrel Sample: 97-99 -
James Suckling
Some much creme de cassis and blackcurrant aromas and flavors here. Full-bodied with powerful tannins, yet fine and layered. Chewy. You can really feel the thick grape skins here. Excellent length. Tannins spread across the palate. Minerally and crushed stone.
Barrel Sample: 97-98 -
Decanter
Beautiful and beguiling nose, perfumed blackcurrants and dark fruits; damsons, plums, raspberries and rose petals. Lovely crunchy fruit, real bite and presence in the mouth. Excellent precision, tannins are succulent and ripe they fill the mouth with a juicy, intense granular texture. There is such depth to this - perfume, tobacco, earth, violets and concentrated fruits that have a verticality to them with an unprecedented 98% of Cabernet Sauvignon providing the support and the backbone. There is a crystalline purity to the fruit giving tension to the overall frame, it’s focused and driven all with excellent definition. This is not a wallflower of a wine - it’s charming and confident, strutting its stuff right now and giving you absolut St-Julien terroir and vintage markers in the glass with slate, graphite and liquorice salinity on show. Skilled winemaking on show.
Barrel Sample: 97 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
One of the Médoc's most powerful wines this year is the 2022 Ducru-Beaucaillou, a blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and 18% Merlot that opens in the glass with aromas of dark cherries and berries mingled with pencils shavings, vanilla pod and spices. Full-bodied, broad-shouldered and muscular, with a core of ripe but lively fruit underpinned by a chassis of powdery, liberally extracted tannin that asserts itself on the finish, it's a punchy, modern Saint-Julien reminiscent of a hypothetical blend of the 2018 and 2020.
Barrel Sample: 94-96
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2021- Vinous
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Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou is named after the beautiful, large stones found in its unique wine-growing terroir. This exceptional ecosystem produces fine, elegant, tasty wines with a long finish - in short, archetypical Saint-Julien wines.
Perched on an exceptional site with incomparable views over the Gironde estuary, in the center of a hundred-year-old park, Ducru-Beaucaillou is a majestic, Victorian-style castle, which has, over time, become one of the great symbols of the Médoc. Unusual for Bordeaux, it is built directly above the barrel cellars, enveloping its owners, who have lived here for over sixty years.
Today, the estate is managed by the company Jean Eugène Borie SA, which is owned by Mrs Borie, her daughter Sabine Coiffe and her son Bruno-Eugène, CEO since 2003, the third generation of the Borie family to head the estate. There are very close links between this estate and the five families who have been its successive owners.
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.