Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou 2017
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Deep, dark purple. A stunning and tight bouquet, very compact, which opens with airing to give a fine fruit with floral notes and a touch of violet. Later, after swirling, there is a touch of graphite. The palate is juicy, tasty, and supported by a fine freshness. A captivating wine; a lot of body, very high standard, remarkable length. A very academic construction.
Blend: 90% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Attractive, intense aromas of ripe blueberries, currants and more savory, tarry notes, as well as iodine, violets and cassis. The palate has a supple and succulent feel. This is cabernet in outright seductive mode, offering such fluid tannins and mouth-filling length. A blend of 90% cabernet sauvignon and 10% merlot. One of the stars of the vintage. Drink or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
One of the wines of the vintage in the Medoc, the 2017 Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou comes from 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot from tiny yields of 35 hectoliters per hectare. Brought up in new barrels, it offers stunning notes of pure creme de cassis, unsmoked tobacco, lead pencil, and crushed rocks. Showing a touch of spring flowers with air, full-bodied richness and depth, awesome tannin quality, and a laser-like level of precision and purity, it’s going to need a decade of cellaring yet will have 40-50 years of prime drinking. Hats off to proprietor Bruno Borie for another magical wine.
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Wine Enthusiast
While the dense and dark tannins are prominent, they can’t mask the exuberant fruit that wants to burst out. Blackberry flavors are impressively ripe and rich, shot through with acidity that gives the wine salinity as well as freshness. At the back, those tannins will allow the wine to age over many years. Don’t drink before 2024.
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Decanter
Deep ruby in colour, the tannins are confident and there is a good building of layers and power despite the still-evident austerity. As it opens up, you get cigar box, vanilla bean, liquorice, black chocolate and layers of gourmet flavours after a carafe (we tried it with and without). No need to worry too much about that, as you're not going to want to be drinking this yet but it gives a good indication of the fact that this is going to progress well and steadily, and is an excellent example of the vintage. Bottled in July. It will be ready significantly before the 2016 but probably after the 2015. This has clear tension and a sense of purity to the fruit flavours. 100% new oak.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep purple-black in color, the 2017 Ducru-Beaucaillou slowly unfurls to reveal beautifully fragrant notes of warm kirsch, wild blueberries, fresh red and black currants and violets with wafts of underbrush and Earl Grey tea. Medium-bodied, the palate has great freshness and elegance, with very well-played, plush tannins and bags of perfumed fruit, finishing on a lingering spicy note. The wine was aged for 18 months in 100% new French oak barrels. The blend is 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot. Rating: 96+
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Wine Spectator
A suave and seductive wine, with a beautifully caressing mouthfeel to the layers of warmed plum, steeped boysenberry and blackberry compote flavors. Licorice snap, mesquite, wood spice and black tea notes swirl around as the fruit plays out. A graphite spine carries the finish effortlessly. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Best from 2023 through 2038.
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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.